A look back: Cole Escola and Conrad Ricamora at opening night of 'Oh, Mary!'
Both actors are 2025 Tony Award nominees for their respective performances as Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln in the hit comedy play, which Escola also wrote.
Comedian, actor, and writer Cole Escola isn't one to be sentimental about their work. When asked about the audience response to their play Oh, Mary! at its Broadway opening night in July, they deadpanned: "So far, they seem to really be loving it, but it's mostly friends, and you can't trust friends. So we'll see in a few weeks what audiences are doing."
Jokes aside, Oh, Mary! had already played a critically acclaimed, twice-extended Off-Broadway premiere before riding that wave to Broadway's Lyceum Theatre last summer. Unsurprisingly, it's also been a hit there ever since.
"The first performance was scary because we were like, 'What if no one laughs? Or what if people leave?'" Escola admitted, then joked, "For the most part, people have been laughing. And then they leave after."
Most recently, the show earned five Tony Award nominations on May 1. Escola is up for two of them — Best Play and Best Actor in a Play — for writing and starring in the show as a deranged, repressed, and over-the-top version of Mary Todd Lincoln who couldn't care less about her husband's dealings in politics and war. All she wants is booze and a return to her pre-White House career in cabaret.
Another is for stage and screen veteran Conrad Ricamora, up for Best Featured Actor in a Play (his first Tony nod) for playing an equally repressed Abe Lincoln with his own secret desires. He recalled immediately bursting into laughter upon seeing Escola's script for the first time.
"I was reading it at my kitchen table, and my husband was sitting on the couch, and I was just giggling," Ricamora said. "He looked over at me like, 'What are you doing?' And I was like, 'You have to read this. It's the funniest thing I've read in years.'"
Being at the 299-seat Lucille Lortel Theatre off Broadway let the script's scrappy, unpretentious nature shine, but doing it at the 950-seat Lyceum adds a new layer of humorous irony: Oh, Mary! lovingly skewers "sophisticated" theatre from within an opulent venue built for it.
But the show hasn't lost its sense of intimacy, the kind that draws audiences deep into Mary's mad mind. "It's been the same raucous energy just multiplied by three because we have three times the seats," Ricamora said. "There are times where we can't hear each other on stage because the laughter is so loud."
Oh, Mary!'s humor comes in all forms: sight gags, one-liners, clever and surprising twists on history (despite Escola saying they did zero research), and even a musical "madcap medley" in which Mary goes for broke and seizes her long-awaited spotlight. The play shows a new side of Ricamora to fans more familiar with his dramatic work on How to Get Away With Murder, but Escola's fans will recognize their delightfully unhinged humor from shows like Search Party and NYC's comedy and cabaret circuits.
"If you're a fan of my other work, first of all, shame on you," said Escola. "Second of all, this is my favorite thing that I've ever made or done, and I'm really proud of it. This encapsulates me perfectly."
Get Oh, Mary! tickets now.
Photo credit: Oh, Mary! on Broadway. (Photos by Emilio Madrid)
Originally published on