Review of Oh, Mary! on Broadway with Jinkx Monsoon

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I’ve worked at an Off-Off-Broadway space for about five years now, but because I don’t live in New York City (god, I wish I could own a nice brownstone in the city, but we’re never probably getting to that point), my interactions with the theatre world can be quite limited. However, when I do come up to New York, I try to get as many theatre tickets as I can.

For this trip, in August 2025, it was a bit last minute so I waited to buy the tickets for shows. I was waiting to see if I landed a job by then, as I was unexpectedly unemployed for a while, but I didn’t! I did end up finding one but was scheduled to start in late August 2025, so this was my last venture around the city for a while.

Thankfully all of the shows I wanted to see weren’t too expensive—Oh, Mary! happened to be the most expensive ticket because I purchased a partial view seat in the balcony. I also saw Buena Vista Social Club and John Proctor is the Villain. The reviews for those shows will be out soon.

Here’s my tip for the partial view seats at the Lyceum Theater: look it up in advance. When I saw A Strange Loop a few years back I got the first row center partial view and it was a seat where you literally could only see the stage if you leaned forward. For this production, I saw the people in front of me leaning to see the stage, so I imagine it’s similar—although the staging for this is that only a few scenes are at the front of the stage.

A happy accident with those show is that I actually caught the second performance of the new cast! When I bought the ticket they all weren’t announced yet, so when I saw the news I was really interested to see how this was going to go. I had only seen Michael Urie before in Torch Song (which was my first show back in 2018), but I was particularly excited for Jinkx.

Let’s get into the review! This intro is getting long.

Mary Todd Lincoln dreams of being a cabaret star, much to her husband’s ire.

In Oh, Mary! reality becomes fiction—something to remember is that while the main characters of the show are indeed real people who actually existed, Cole Escola, who wrote the show, was not intending for this to be a hyper realistic depiction of what actually went down.

So in the world of this show, Mary Todd Lincoln is a snarky alcoholic with an existentialist crisis because her husband, who is dictating the way her life is run, won’t let her follow her dreams of being a cabaret star. He secretly loves cabaret, as one of the running gags of the show is that he’s a gay man who wants God to “fix” his gay urges.

Because she’s unable to live life the way she wants and is stuck inside her husband’s office and the White House, forced to interact with people like Louise. The way we see Mary Todd is someone who is deliberately snarky—I saw this as a method to protect themselves from the world outside, especially when she shows regret for how she treats her new acting tutor.

Anyways, her husband is also very much using her to hide his sexuality, which is a big plot point of the show, and to get her to stop complaining and being a drunk he sets her up not only with Louise, but with an acting teacher. He promises her that if she is good, then she can finally go on stage and be an actress (just not in the cabaret, as that might make him seem like an embarrassed and gay man).

This is a very short show—I was pleasantly surprised at how when I got out of the theatre, it was only 9:30 and I could get home before 11 for once. This is a one act run continuously, so that means there is no intermission. I was warned to use the bathroom before the show, as the Lyceum, especially if you’re in the balcony, as there are literally only two stalls in there. When I was on my way out of there, I saw a massive line wrapped around the corner for the women’s bathroom.

Jinkx Monsoon was definitely born for this role though—that’s my first comment about the new cast. They commanded the stage and used physical comedy in a way that was highly effective. The applause when they came in also was thunderous, and that supportive applause continued all the way through for the other new cast members.

Of the new cast, Jinkx and Michael are the standouts for me. Kumail was getting a lot of laughs when he was up there on stage, but I did find him to be a bit weaker than the rest of the cast. He had his moments where he shone and was genuinely really funny, but maybe he’s just in an adjusting period (I believe this is first time on Broadway).

Overall Thoughts

I kind of expected that I was going to have a good time going into this show, and indeed we did have a good time. The audience was eating this kind of humor up—the person sitting next to me was laughing so hard they were crying. All of the actors did a great job really, and the length of this show is perfect. I know they have an interesting Thursday schedule, so you could even do three shows in one day if you’re in town for a short amount of time,

Anyways, the writing in this show is dark, but there are some really vulnerable moments and monologues that also stood out to me. It’s not just a comedy that’s going to make you laugh—there are some broader questions about how Mary Todd’s husband is dictating her life and desires while he’s straight up doing whatever he wants when it comes to his own (while also grappling with the Civil War).

There are also a lot of gasp-worthy moments if you know your history and this time period. But all in all: I say watch this one if you want a good time for sure! I know the ticket prices are expensive, but my seat (B 20 in the right balcony) was a partial view seat where I could see pretty much everything of importance. I found it to be worth what I paid and I was quite happy.

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