It would be a mistake to say the humour in Cole Escola’s massive hit Broadway comedy has been lost in translation to the West End: there was a lot of laughter when I caught Oh, Mary! on a Wednesday matinee.
However, I’m afraid it was lost in translation to me.
I didn’t hate this lurid cabaret about Abraham Lincoln’s wife. But after the slew of American critics describing the life-changing injuries they’d suffered from laughing so hard at Sam Pinkleton’s production, the whole thing just felt a bit… ’70s? A little bit Airplane!, a little bit Benny Hill, maybe even a touch of Mr Bean… Really it’s broad, dated humour salvaged by a tremendous cast headed by Jamie Lloyd veteran Mason Alexander Park as Mary and the redoubtable Giles Terera as ‘Mary’s husband’ (ie Abe).
Of course, a lot of British people like ’70s humour: this is a country that still remains dangerously hooked on the 1976 Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. But Oh, Mary! is an old-fashioned farce built on two gags: one, Mary is a boozy narcissist – borderline feral – who dreams of the stage; and two, Abraham Lincoln is gay.
To be fair, there are few cows more sacred in America than Lincoln, and this is of course queer artist Escola co-opting the iconic president, not mocking gay people. Still I’d struggle to say what the difference would be in terms of execution. I don’t know much about Lincoln’s personal life, but the idea of him being a cartoonishly repressed gay man is not in and of itself that funny to me.
Mary, I’m aware, was temperamental and given to mood swings – which to be honest left me further muddled about the intent: satirising a little known (in this country) female public figure on grounds that seem partly based in reality while going ‘lol, what if he was gay’ about her more famous husband is confusing more than anything.
Clearly there is some context missing: we’ve skipped its journey from the cabaret fringes, and instead had it presented to us as the full Broadway show it was never originally intended to be. And of course it would land differently if we had stronger opinions on the Lincolns. But what we’re left with is basically… Kenny Everett with an NYC twist. Which as I said, a lot of people seem to like.
The performers throw themselves into it with absolute conviction. Park is a marvel: pinging around the room like a human special effect, there are some very droll line deliveries (the running joke that Mary is oblivious to the US Civil War is a good one). But it’s the physical business that really delights - pouncing out of closets, growling like a wildcat, and in one glorious non sequitur of a scene, failing to work out how to get down from a table – Park can hold a stage effortlessly and with impressive physicality. And it’s a lot of fun to watch Terera throw his usual character actor nuance to the wind and ham out as a frazzled Abe (even if the heart sinks every time the ‘joke’ that he’s gay rears its head).
Two great leads, a handful of good lines, some top notch physical business and the epically random deployment of Belle and Sebastian’s classic 1996 song ‘Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying’ – these are all good things. Existing at the point in the curve where subversive New York cabaret and naff ‘70s British comedy overlap, there’s clearly an audience over here for Oh, Mary! But that’s not the same thing as living up to the hype.
