Cole Escola’s ‘Oh, Mary!’ Opens on Broadway With a Gay Leather Bar After-Party, a Closeted Abe Lincoln and Plenty of ‘Stupid Gems’
variety.comJordan Moreau After the curtain call of “Oh, Mary!,” star and playwright Cole Escola said that creating the absurd, queer play was a lot like trying to convince your doctor that you have a tumor. “When you have an idea, it’s really embarrassing to care about something that doesn’t exist yet.
It’s really vulnerable. It’s like trying to convince your doctor that you have a tumor based on nothing except you just feel like you probably have one,” Escola said on stage after the Broadway debut of “Oh, Mary!” Thursday night. “You go to your doctor and the doctor’s like, ‘What are the symptoms?’ and you’re like, ‘I don’t have any.
I’m just pretty sure there’s a tumor.’ Then they run the tests and there’s no tumor, you go back again and there’s no tumor, then you go back again and there’s a cyst but they drain it.” Looking back at the “Oh, Mary!” cast, who all made the jump from off-Broadway in the West Village to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, Escola, dressed as Mary Todd Lincoln, thanked the raucous, opening-night crowd in their hilariously witty fashion. “Then you meet people who are not doctors but they are convinced, ‘Yes, that is a tumor.
In fact, we also think we have tumors. Let’s cut ourselves open right now and put it out for the world to see,'” Escola added. “Everyone back here has really committed to cutting themselves open and pouring their tumors out on stage.
