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“Making my Broadway debut in the role of a lifetime – as a miserable, suffocated, alcoholic woman – is a real dream come true.”
Actress Maya Rudolph is set to make her Broadway debut in Cole Escola’s play Oh Mary!, taking on the titular role of Mary.
Other Broadway Marys include Jinkx Monsoon, Jane Krakowski, Tituss Burgess, Betty Gilpin, and Hannah Solow; Rudolph takes over from current Mary, John Cameron Mitchell. “Every Mary is different, so now there’s this opportunity to bring myself to the role,” she told the New York Times, “and, I’ll be honest, I’m excited to see what that is.” Escola, who penned Oh Mary!, originated the role.
“I didn’t fact check ever,” Escola told T&C about writing the play. “I wrote the show from the point of view of the audience, which is our collective third grade understanding of who Mary Todd Lincoln was. And during rehearsal Sam, our director, would send me things like, ‘Oh, my God, look!’ [because] this one telegram in particular addressed to Abraham Lincoln said, ‘come collect your wife she’s making a fool of herself.’ And I’d be like, ‘We really got this right!’”
They added, “So many parts of her feel sanitized throughout history, and to play them could be seen as misogynist or could make her unlikable as a character. If you’re telling this story from President Lincoln’s noble point of view and you’ve got this crazy, drunk harpy, it almost makes her feel stupid. But I love those parts of her. I didn’t go into writing this to exploit those aspects of her, I went into it writing those aspects about me. This show is more about me than it is her. And I just found out that we overlap in so many ways.”
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