“Oh, Mary!” the madcap comedy that has become a serious and sustained hit on Broadway, has chosen a new star to flaunt the title character’s bratty curls: Maya Rudolph.
A “Saturday Night Live” alumna with a long resume of film and television work, Rudolph will be making her Broadway debut in the title role, playing a highly fictionalized version of Mary Todd Lincoln in the determinedly ahistorical spoof. Her first performance is April 28, and she is expected to play the role for eight weeks.
The show has, improbably, already been running for 89 weeks; it is profitable (a rarity for flop-prone Broadway), selling well, and now extending on Broadway until Jan. 3. A second production is running in London, and a North American tour is scheduled to begin in September in Hartford, Connecticut.
Hit Broadway comedy ‘Oh, Mary!’ is coming to Chicago in 2027
The role of Mary, which imagines President Abraham Lincoln’s wife as a narcissistic alcoholic with dreams of being a cabaret star, was originated by the play’s writer, Cole Escola, who won a Tony Award for the performance; it has since been played on Broadway by Tituss Burgess, Betty Gilpin, Jane Krakowski, John Cameron Mitchell, Jinkx Monsoon and Hannah Solow.
In an interview, Rudolph said she had seen the show three times — with Escola, Krakowski and Monsoon in the starring role — “and I just feel like I had never seen anything like it.”
“I had never really seen anything be so much itself,” she said. “Mary can just be her worst, and all over the place, and at the same time incredibly fun to watch. It’s such a delicious, beyond broad, take on a dark comedy.”
Rudolph, who began her career in improv, said Broadway had been a long-term dream.
“I grew up doing musical theater, and thought, ‘When I’m a grown-up, I’m going to move to New York and I’m going to do Broadway,’” she said. “As I started working, I think I always just thought, ‘Oh, maybe later. I’ll do it later.’”
Later, it turns out, is now. Although she admitted to being “nervous as all get-out,” she said she views the casting as “a badge of honor.”
“Every Mary is different, so now there’s this opportunity to bring myself to the role,” she said, “and, I’ll be honest, I’m excited to see what that is.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
