Oh, Mary! at a glance

Show
Oh, Mary!
Venue
Trafalgar Theatre, West End
Address
14 Whitehall, London SW1A 2DY
Nearest station
Charing Cross (3 min walk); Embankment (5 min)
Genre
Dark comedy (Broadway transfer)
Running time
1 hour 20 minutes, no interval
Age guidance
14+ (under 4s not permitted)
Dates
Currently booking to 18 July 2026 (extended)
London premiere
3 December 2025
Current star
Catherine Tate as Mary (27 Apr – 18 Jul 2026)
Price range
From £35 (typically £35–£152)
Writer
Cole Escola
Director
Sam Pinkleton (Tony Award winner)
Awards
2 Tony Awards (2025), Pulitzer Prize finalist (2025), Obie, Outer Critics Circle

Expert Review: Oh, Mary! at the Trafalgar Theatre

4.5
★★★★★

LTH Expert Rating

Reviewed by the London Theatre Hub editorial team. Last updated: 11 May 2026.

The Verdict

Oh, Mary! is the most genuinely original thing in the West End right now. Cole Escola's premise — Mary Todd Lincoln as a furiously bored, whisky-soaked, frustrated cabaret star; Abraham Lincoln as a closeted husband desperate to keep her off the stage in the weeks before his assassination — should not work. It absolutely does. Eighty minutes, no interval, no concession to taste or historical accuracy, and an extremely high gag rate throughout. The Broadway production was so successful it broke box office records at the Lyceum; the West End transfer opened in December 2025 to broadly five-star reviews and has already extended twice.

The casting trick the show pulls — different leading performers cycling through, all making the role their own — is part of what's kept it fresh. London's first Mary, Mason Alexander Park (the non-binary star whose performance Time Out called "dynamite") played the role from December 2025 through mid-March 2026 to extraordinary acclaim. Catherine Tate has taken over from 27 April through to the final performance on 18 July. Tate is, as anyone who saw her opposite David Tennant in Much Ado About Nothing knows, a serious stage actor with formidable comic chops — and Mary is essentially a part-Tate, part-Bovvered-girl, part-Lady Macbeth role designed for exactly the kind of fearless commitment she's spent decades practising. If you missed her in Much Ado, this is the one.

The supporting company is reason enough on its own. Scott Karim took over as Mary's Husband from Giles Terera (Olivier-winning original Aaron Burr in Hamilton) in March; Dino Fetscher, Kate O'Donnell and Oliver Stockley have been with the production since opening. Sam Pinkleton's Tony-winning direction is precise, fast and structurally watertight. There is nothing else like this on in London. Go.

What Makes It Special

  • Catherine Tate as Mary. Tate's West End stage credits include Under the Blue Sky, Assassins at the Menier, and the West End and Broadway transfer of Much Ado About Nothing with David Tennant. She has two WhatsOnStage Awards. The Mary Todd Lincoln role — broad, vulgar, physical, technically demanding, requiring an actor who can make abject melodrama land as comedy — is squarely in her wheelhouse.
  • The play itself. Cole Escola's 80-minute one-act premiered off-Broadway in February 2024, transferred to Broadway in July 2024, and won Escola a Tony for Best Leading Actor in a Play (he originated the role himself, becoming the first non-binary performer to win the category). Director Sam Pinkleton also won a Tony. It was a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist in 2025.
  • The opening night cast. Mason Alexander Park's London Mary earned five-star reviews from across the press. Giles Terera — Olivier Award winner for the original West End Hamilton — played the President opposite. Both have now left, but their work shaped the production currently running.
  • The supporting company. Dino Fetscher's Mary's Teacher and Kate O'Donnell's chaperone Louise are widely cited by critics as standouts. Oliver Stockley's frustrated assistant gives the show some of its best straight-man comedy. Scott Karim (now Mary's Husband) brings National Theatre's Dracula and London Tide credentials to the role.
  • Sam Pinkleton's direction. The Tony-winning staging makes the 80 minutes feel both perfectly paced and on the edge of collapse — exactly the right texture for a play this anarchic. Dots' scenic design and Holly Pierson's costumes amplify the comic-book heightened reality.
  • Eighty minutes, no interval. The single most underrated quality of the production — a show this dense should not have an interval, and it doesn't. You're out at 9pm.

You'll love Oh, Mary! if you...

  • Want a comedy that genuinely doesn't resemble anything else currently running
  • Are a Catherine Tate fan — this is exactly the kind of role she does best
  • Enjoyed Cabaret, The Book of Mormon, or other camp/queer-coded comedies
  • Want to be out at 9pm — 80 minutes, no interval
  • Are happy with vulgarity, queerness, and historical irreverence in equal measure

It might not be for you if you...

  • Prefer traditional historical drama or biographical accuracy — this is gleefully made up
  • Are uncomfortable with strong language, sexual references, or anti-establishment humour
  • Found The Book of Mormon "too much" — Oh, Mary! is wilder
  • Are bringing under-14s — the age guidance is firm
  • Prefer slower-paced, talkier plays — this is high-octane throughout

Best for

  • Catherine Tate fans
  • Dark comedy lovers
  • Queer audiences
  • Broadway-curious West End-goers
  • Date night
  • Out by 9pm

Not the strongest fit for younger children, traditional history fans, or audiences sensitive to camp, vulgarity, or queer content.

Critical Reception

Press night for the London production was December 2025. The reception was broadly enthusiastic — most critics awarded four or five stars — with two notable holdouts (The Guardian and The Times) who didn't get on with the show's American camp register. The original cast featured Mason Alexander Park (Mary) and Giles Terera (Abraham), both of whom drew particular critical praise. Verified ratings and notable quotes from the major UK publications:

  • The Telegraph — strong positive ("a riot… the funniest performance in town")
  • The Independent — strong positive ("a captivating creation")
  • Time Out ★★★★ ("a wildly unlikely sensation")
  • WhatsOnStage ★★★★
  • The Stage — positive
  • Reviews Hub — strong positive ("funniest and most surprising show in the West End")
  • The Guardian — sceptical (Arifa Akbar)
  • The Times — sceptical (Clive Davis)

Source: published reviews of the West End production at the Trafalgar Theatre, December 2025 – January 2026. The play has now extended twice; current ratings reflect the original press night cast. Reviews for Catherine Tate's interpretation are forthcoming.

Everything You Need to Know

What happens in Oh, Mary!?

It's the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln's assassination in April 1865. Or rather: it's Cole Escola's lurid, queer, very funny version of those weeks, which bears the same relationship to history that an over-served cabaret act bears to a chamber concert.

The set-up

Mary Todd Lincoln — bored, frustrated, almost permanently drunk — is locked in the White House by her exasperated husband. Mary's one passion is cabaret. She was, in this fictional universe, a former (terrible) cabaret star before her marriage, and she wants nothing more than to get back on stage. Abraham Lincoln, dealing with the Civil War and a substantial personal secret, has hired a chaperone (Louise) to keep her contained and away from booze. It is not working.

The acting teacher

In desperation, Mary's Husband decides to hire her an acting teacher — figuring that if she can pretend to be working on her craft she might leave him alone. Enter Mary's Teacher (Dino Fetscher), a handsome young man who is supposed to teach her Shakespeare and dampen her cabaret ambitions. The play tilts immediately into a series of escalating disasters: Mary lusts after the teacher, the teacher tries professionally to ignore this, and the lessons themselves — particularly the Shakespeare ones — become some of the most demented comic set pieces written for the stage in recent memory.

The Husband's secret

Meanwhile, Mary's Husband is conducting a separate plot involving his earnest young assistant (Oliver Stockley). The play makes increasingly broad gestures toward Lincoln's closeted sexuality — gestures that are funny rather than serious, deliberately ahistorical rather than revisionist. Escola is not making a claim about the real Abraham Lincoln; he's using historical figures as comic raw material the way SNL uses sitting presidents.

The Tempest, the cabaret, and the assassination

The play accelerates through Mary's increasingly unhinged attempts to mount her own one-woman version of The Tempest, a chaperone subplot that goes nowhere on purpose, and a final sequence that takes the historical assassination and turns it into a punchline. The ending — which involves a song — is genuinely surprising in a way the rest of the play has been preparing you for without you noticing. Critics have widely identified the finale as the moment the show earns its critical reputation.

What the play is actually about

Underneath the slapstick and the vulgarity, Oh, Mary! is a play about thwarted ambition. Mary wants to be on stage. Her husband won't let her. The world won't let her. Most of the play's funniest moments are also its saddest: the gap between what she thinks she can be and what the world will permit. That's the through-line that makes the show land for audiences who might otherwise resist its register — and it's why Escola won a Pulitzer finalist nod, not just a Tony.