Last updated: 22 September 2026
By Tristan · Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
Ninety minutes with a very loud Mary Todd Lincoln.
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.
Cool Factor: 4/5
I saw Oh, Mary! at the Trafalgar Theatre on Saturday 12 September 2026, the 3.30pm matinee, from Row C of the Circle. Drag Queen Royalty Jinkx Monsoon played Mary Todd Lincoln, and I laughed a lot. My Oh, Mary! review gets four out of five: ninety minutes of very good physical comedy, plus one habit that wears thin before the end.
What Oh, Mary! actually is
Cole Escola wrote it. Escola is an American comedian and writer from Clatskanie, Oregon, who came up through New York cabaret and the cult web series Jeffery & Cole Casserole. TV work followed in Difficult People, At Home with Amy Sedaris and Search Party. Escola also played Mary in the original production, which opened off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in 2024 and moved to Broadway that July.
The idea is one sentence long. Mary Todd Lincoln is a drunk with a thwarted ambition to sing cabaret. Her husband keeps her shut in a back room so she cannot embarrass him. All of it happens in the weeks before he is shot.
Escola told NPR where the whole thing started: "What if Abraham Lincoln's assassination wasn't such a bad thing for Mary Todd?"
That sounds like a sketch, and for ten minutes it plays like one. Then it settles into a shape. Escola describes the play as being about "a woman with a dream that no one around her understands", and that dream drives every scene in it.
The Broadway production won Tony Awards for Escola's performance and for Sam Pinkleton's direction. Escola became the first nonbinary winner of Best Actor in a Play. Pinkleton directs here too. The London company opened at the Trafalgar in December 2025, and it went on to win Best New Entertainment or Comedy Play at the 2026 Olivier Awards. Giles Terera played Mary's husband in the first London cast. He was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
The Trafalgar Theatre, and Row C of the Circle
The room
The Trafalgar sits at 14 Whitehall, about 100 yards south of Trafalgar Square in central London. You arrive through tourists rather than through theatreland. It is a small house by West End standards, and the circle is steep, so the sightlines hold up.
I was in row C. The view was good, with nothing cut off at the sides and no heads in the way. Legroom was acceptable rather than generous. For a ninety-minute show with no interval that trade is fine. I would think harder about it on a three-hour play.
A 3.30pm matinee, and who was in the room
Matinee crowds are different, and with a cast that rotates every few weeks the performance you book changes the show you get. A Saturday afternoon in Whitehall skews older and straighter than a Friday night at the same address. That turned out to matter, because much of the comedy is calibrated to shock. It needs an audience that can still be shocked.
The gag underneath the whole play is that Abraham Lincoln is gay. Mary is the last person in America to work it out. Around me that landed on middle-aged couples who had booked a funny thing about Lincoln. They took a while to catch up, then went with it, and the room warmed up fast.
Jinkx Monsoon as Mary Todd Lincoln
Monsoon is perfect casting, and I mean that as a technical observation rather than a compliment about drag. The part needs somebody who can be grotesque for ninety minutes without asking you to like her. It then needs one sincere beat near the end to stick. Monsoon has been doing exactly that in cabaret rooms for years.
The physical comedy is very good. The expressions on Mary's face while she endures a one-sided chat about needlework are hilarious. Jinkx throws herself around the set with real precision. The timing on the falls and the recoveries is properly worked out rather than thrown. Partly it plays like a drag panto, which is not a criticism from me. Panto is a hard form and this cast can do it.
She has been open about how much force the role takes. She told Interview magazine that she warned the company on day one. "Please understand, I don't intend to do this, but I act very hard, and I have broken every prop I've come into contact with."
The finale is the payoff the play spends the whole ninety minutes withholding. Mary finally gets her stage: alone in front of the house curtain, arms flung wide, a gold spotlight punched through all that blue behind her. She has been told the dream is ridiculous since the opening scene. The staging hands it over straight, with no joke attached, and that is the one sincere beat the part needs.
The four people around her
The 12 September company was Scott Karim as Mary's husband and Dino Fetscher as her teacher, the handsome John Wilkes Booth (no spoilers!). Kate O'Donnell played the chaperone Louise and Oliver Stockley the husband's 'assistant'. All four were good. More usefully, all four were good in the same show as each other.
In a farce this fast, that takes work. Stockley called the production "a very precise, well-oiled machine", and he is right about the mechanics. He also put the cast side of it plainly. "Everyone depends on each other. You can feel how what you're doing gives someone else the platform to take off."
You can see that from the circle. Nobody is competing with Monsoon and nobody is coasting either. The chemistry holds all the way through. Karim's straight-man work in particular gives her something solid to bounce off.
Nobody is competing with Monsoon and nobody is coasting either.
The shouting, which is my honest problem with it
The critique
Mary screams a lot. This is a delivery style rather than a handful of outbursts. Most of her big lines arrive at full volume in the same over-the-top register. The show reaches that volume inside the first twenty minutes.
The first ten or so times it is very funny. After that it stops being a surprise. Because the surprise was doing the comic work, the laugh gets smaller each time. By the last twenty minutes I was enjoying the plot more than the performance. For a show built on one central turn, that is the wrong way round.
This is partly a script problem rather than a Monsoon problem. Escola wrote Mary at eleven out of ten, and a ninety-minute one-act leaves nowhere to climb. Monsoon has a good line about the technique involved. "You've got to treat screaming like singing, I guess." She does treat it like singing, and it is well produced. There is just one note in it for longer than there needs to be.
The other honest limitation is scope. This is a very funny ninety minutes and it is not trying to be anything else. Anyone hoping the historical setting pays off as history will be disappointed. The Civil War exists here purely as a thing Mary is not paying attention to.
Why the West End has this show right now
Oh, Mary! is a clear example of a model the West End has been circling for a while. One small play, one enormous central role, and a rotating cast of names playing it in blocks. London has already had Mason Alexander Park, Catherine Tate, Escola and Monsoon in the part. Lolly Adefope takes it next.
Commercially that keeps one production selling for more than a year, because every handover is a fresh reason to book. It also means the play is now the star rather than any one performer. That is unusual for a comedy written as a vehicle for its own author.
There is a second effect. A drag performer headlining a Whitehall theatre at 3.30 on a Saturday reaches people who would never book a drag show. So the jokes land on an audience that did not come looking for them. That is a large part of why the matinee worked as well as it did.
Is Oh, Mary! worth the money?
Tickets start at ยฃ27.39 through Official London Theatre, the not-for-profit arm of the Society of London Theatre. They start at about ยฃ35 through ATG Tickets, which is the venue's own seller. Prices were checked on 19 September 2026.
At the bottom of that range it is good value. You are getting a very funny ninety minutes with an Olivier on it. Higher up the price list I would hesitate. A top-price seat here costs roughly what a full-length play costs, and you are out by five o'clock.
The no-interval running time changes how you plan the day rather than what you pay. A 3.30 matinee leaves the whole evening free, so it pairs well with dinner. For comparison, Pride at the National Theatre scored five out of five here, and ran well over twice as long. Dracula in the West End is the other loud night out I have written up this year.
Practical information
The Trafalgar Theatre is at 14 Whitehall, London SW1A 2DY. Charing Cross is a two-minute walk and Embankment is about five.
The venue lists the running time as ninety minutes with no interval. Age guidance is 14 and over, and children under 4 are not admitted. Official London Theatre lists the content warnings as water-based haze and one gunshot sound effect.
Performances run Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 7.30pm. Thursday is 5.30pm and 8.45pm, and Saturday is 3.30pm and 7.30pm. Jinkx Monsoon's run ends on 26 September 2026. Lolly Adefope then plays Mary Todd Lincoln from 28 September to 5 December 2026. The production is booking to 2 January 2027. If you want to see Monsoon specifically, book this week.
The verdict
Four out of five, Stone cold. It is a very funny ninety minutes with a central performance pitched exactly right for the room. The four actors around Monsoon hold the machine together without pulling focus.
Cool Factor
★★★★☆
4 out of 5
It stops short of five because of the volume. The screaming carries most of the comedy and it arrives at full strength early. So the laughs get smaller as the afternoon goes on, and the last stretch runs on a joke you have already had. That is the only thing holding it back. I went in expecting a novelty and I laughed a lot.
Oh, Mary! review: common questions
Is Oh, Mary! worth seeing?
Yes, if you want ninety minutes of loud, shocking physical comedy and you are not expecting a history play. It suits anyone who likes broad farce. It will irritate anyone who does not, because the register never softens.
How long is Oh, Mary!?
Ninety minutes with no interval, according to the Trafalgar Theatre. That makes a 3.30pm matinee a short afternoon out.
How much are Oh, Mary! tickets?
From ยฃ27.39 through Official London Theatre and from about ยฃ35 through ATG Tickets, both checked on 19 September 2026. Prices move with demand, so the cheapest seats go first for weekend performances.
Who plays Mary Todd Lincoln after Jinkx Monsoon?
Lolly Adefope, from 28 September to 5 December 2026. Monsoon's last performance is 26 September 2026.
Is Oh, Mary! suitable for children?
The venue's age guidance is 14 and over, and children under 4 are not admitted.
Do you need to know American history to enjoy it?
No. The play assumes you know Abraham Lincoln was shot and nothing else. It treats the Civil War as background noise on purpose.
Is this Oh, Mary! review based on the Jinkx Monsoon cast?
Yes. I saw the 12 September 2026 matinee with Monsoon, Karim, Fetscher, O'Donnell and Stockley. The Adefope company from 28 September is a different cast in the same production.
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