Cole Escola, Betty Gilpin, and Tituss Burgess have one thing in common: they’ve all starred opposite Bianca Leigh in Oh, Mary! on Broadway.
The season’s most uproarious comedy (and the recent recipient of five Tony Award nominations, including for Best Play), Oh, Mary! tells the true story of first lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Okay, “true story” may be generous: this version of Mary is mean and miserable, trapped in a loveless marriage with president Abraham Lincoln when all she really wants is to be a cabaret legend. By her side is Louise, a companion appointed by the president to keep Mary under control and teach the her feminine ways of the world. She’s been played by Leigh since the show first opened off-Broadway in 2024, and more than a year later, she’s still bringing the house down as Louise eight times a week.
INTO chatted with Leigh to learn how playing chaperone to three different Marys — playwright Cole Escola, GLOW star Betty Gilpin, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt icon Tituss Burgess — changed her own performance as Louise, and if she ever predicted Oh, Mary!’s runaway Broadway success.
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Hi, Bianca! You’re such a star in Oh, Mary! as Mary’s chaperone Louise — how did you first become involved with the show?
I was approached in early 2023 to do a developmental reading. I didn’t realize that Cole had thrown my name into the ring, and I found out later. I said, “But we’ve never met.” And they said, “I saw you in Transamerica 20 years ago, and then in Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge, and you’ve been here ever since.”
So I was invited to participate in the developmental reading, and I knew right away it was something very special. I went in, and I was like, “What is this?” I mean, there was camp, but there was so much more.
Now, you’ve done hundreds of performances as Louise — but while you’ve stayed constant, your scene partner has changed. First, Cole Escola played Mary. Then, Betty Gilpin took over. And somewhere in the mix, Tituss Burgess had a three-week limited run as the first lady. What was it like to work with each of those three actors?
When I heard Cole was leaving for a while, I was devastated, because most of the scenes are twofers, and all my scenes are with Cole. You’re just the two of you on stage, and you’ve come from off-Broadway, and suddenly there’s 900 people as opposed to 300. You’re both downtown babies who’ve made their mark, and now you’re in the big time. I’ve been on Broadway before, but not originating a principal role.
What Cole and I were able to do is build a trust. I speak about it a little more romantically, because Cole has several different scene partners. But for me, also, it’s odd, because as a supporting actor, you are kind of a mama bear. You’re supporting, you’re propelling, you’re encouraging, keeping it moving, because you know they’ve got an hour and a half. It’s an arduous thing. You’re told when you’re young the most important person is your acting partner. You know, when you’re a baby, you’re like, “Yeah, right, whatever. I can act with a broomstick. I want to show what I can do.” And you realize it’s like, it’s just the two of you. That’s all you have. And I say it’s kind of like a trapeze: You look at your partner, you’re like, “Jump. Let go. I will catch you.”
So I was kind of devastated. Cole wasn’t. [laughs] I have not experienced Cole being sentimental in that way. Cole is extremely generous and extremely caring, but also very realistic. There’s no crocodile tears there. And I think they see a bigger picture.
The same day I heard Cole was leaving, I heard Betty was coming. I was so excited, because I’ve loved Betty for so long, loved Betty’s work. And I was afraid, “Oh no, it’s going to become this tired thing with just a series of people?” But number one, you cannot do that with Oh, Mary. If someone’s going to play Mary, it has to be a top-flight talent — and luckily, there are a lot out there that would love the challenge, so we’ll see what happens. But Betty was so loving and so caring.
Betty’s Mary was very different. Betty’s an actor. Cole is an actor and a comic, you know, and Betty is a very serious actress who’s also extremely funny. So what Betty brought was tapping into, “Mary is miserable.” Not just miserable and ornery and sadistic — her Mary was far less sadistic. Her Mary was just miserable and unfulfilled. She was in a loveless marriage, and she didn’t want to be first lady. She was like, “What the!? I want to be free! I want to be on stage! I want to be an artist!” And so with Betty, Mary and Louise were more sisterly, sisters that were bickering, as opposed to Cole’s, which is a little bit more like the spider and the fly.
With Betty, a lot of the people really loved it, especially the women in the audience. They really seemed to respond to the relationship between the two women, because it was complicated. There was a complication, and you felt that there was some kind of a love from Mary to Louise. And it’s great to explore that.
Now Tituss — who is now my dear friend — Tituss is an actor and a comic, but for three weeks, I would say Tituss was more of a bravura comic performance. Like, “This is going to be a comedy performance for the ages.” If it was six months, I’m sure we would have gone deeper into Mary’s misery, you know? But with Tituss, it was off the wall. I said, “It’s the biggest gay rodeo in the world.” Tituss is just — the talent just explodes, you know? I mean, so, so funny. And for three weeks, it was just crammed with so many of Tituss’ devoted followers. It was wild.
Maybe sometimes the lines were not perfect, or sometimes a line might be dropped, or sometimes a line might be added — but I found it so exciting, having done it so many times. And I would look at Tituss and I’d be like, “I’m here for you. We’re partners. I’m here for you. If you forget, if you add a line, I’ll work around it.” And there may be a couple of moments where it was like, “Oh, okay, my laugh got lost.” But then there were other moments that Tituss would just turn and look at me and be like, “This is your moment, girl.” And it was stuff that was not originally in the show. It was just a moment where she’d just turn to me and go, “Go ahead.” And so I was like, “Okay, I’ve got 10 seconds to do a symphony of facial expressions.” That got huge laughs, and that’s because of Tituss. It was like a wrapped gift. It’s like, “I know I’m tearing up the stage, but here. Here’s a wrapped present for you.”
That makes me even more excited for Tituss to return to the role this summer. Thinking back to that first reading of Oh, Mary! two years ago, did you predict that the show would be such a massive success?
No, I didn’t. There’s things about this I could not possibly have known — but I was also not surprised. I wasn’t surprised. And part of that is because when we were selling out at the Lortel, when you’re in something that is sold out and people can’t get tickets, that’s a big clue that it’s going to have legs. And I also found over the years that the big surprise is getting the job. [laughs] That’s a surprise. Once you have the gig, once you have the job, anything could happen. It could bomb, and I’ve been in plenty of those. It could do well. It could be a hit, and I’ve been in a few of those. Or it could be a huge, mega hit, which I’ve never experienced like this before. But I wasn’t surprised, because anything could happen.
You know, they say certain things are ahead of their time, and certain things are like, “Oh, this has been done.” And other things arrive just when people are really yearning for it. And one thing I’ve heard from people is, “I’ve wanted a good belly laugh. I’ve wanted just to be able to laugh for an hour and a half, and I haven’t had that in a long time, and to be able to come here and just laugh till I cry, it’s such a gift.” And I think when I first saw the script — I mean, I came to New York, and there was the Ridiculous Theatrical Company with Charles Ludlam and Everett Quinton, and then, of course, Charles Busch. So when I first looked at the script, that’s the first thing I thought: It’s the next iteration of ridiculous theater. But what’s happened is, Cole is both of that tradition and expanding on the tradition, and a true original. ♦
Oh, Mary! is now running at the Lyceum Theater on Broadway through September 28. Tickets are available here.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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