Broadway Shockers 2024: Oh, Mary! Becomes the Hit Play of the Year

As 2024 draws to a close, TheaterMania looks back on some of the most jaw-dropping stories of the year.

I loved Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! when it opened at the Lucille Lortel Theatre off-Broadway in February, comparing it favorably to the work of Charles Busch and Charles Ludlam. Of Escola’s performance as an alcoholic, sociopathic Mary Todd Lincoln, I raved, “She’s a mess! She’s outrageously offensive! She’s utterly fabulous!”

By then, word-of-mouth had gotten around, and most of the remaining tickets were quickly snatched up, leading to a generous extension at the Lortel. I thought that might be the end of a happy but well-precedented story, in which an off-beat off-Broadway show finds and then depletes its New York-based audience over the course of a few months. But I was wrong.

On April 24, the producers announced a Broadway transfer for a limited 12-week run starting June 26. It has now been 26 weeks since Oh, Mary! moved into the Lyceum Theatre with no signs that it’s going anywhere anytime soon. The show has consistently grossed over $1 million a week since opening in July (a record for that theater), and last month it became the first Broadway show of the 2024-25 season to recoup. Tickets are on sale through June 28, with Betty Gilpin slated to take over the role of Mary Todd on January 21.

This is a remarkable achievement for a new Broadway play with no household-name actors in the cast (a feat usually only attempted by a handful of not-for-profit companies). But while Escola may not presently have the name recognition of Denzel Washington or George Clooney, that looks likely to change this spring when all three are likely to be nominated in the Tony category of Best Actor in a Play. Is it possible that the downtown cabaret crooner will snatch the trophy away from the movie stars in 2025?

Whatever happens, the runaway success of Oh, Mary! is a sign that audiences are hungry for comedy and are ready to part with their dollars for a genuinely funny one — whether on or off-Broadway. I hope this is the beginning of a golden age of strange and irreverent new plays in New York.