Jesse
Green

July 11, 2024

The laughs roll through the house and return, creating a loop that at times approaches hysteria. (Never for the actors though; they do not break.) And the technical aspects, though also enlarged, remain smarter than they are lavish, recalling the roots of the drag aesthetic in the handmade ethos of community and school.

Brittani
Samuel

July 11, 2024

By the play’s end, we’re no wiser to the qualms of the mid-19th century (though that was hardly the point), but we are relaxed by the exercise of laughing for 75 minutes in our own beleaguered world.

The Guardian

Adrian
Horton

July 11, 2024

“This moment, among many others, brought the house down. Oh, Mary! is an uproariously inaccurate and queer romp through history without the tiring anachronistic politics of, say, fellow historical romps Hamilton or Six, or even contemporary TV shows like Dickinson or the current sleeper summer hit My Lady Jane.”

Zachary
Stewart

July 11, 2024

The show is even better in its uptown transfer, with bigger physical performances and punchier deliveries of the hilarious lines in Escola’s script. Laughs are rarely more than a few seconds apart. It is, without a doubt, the funniest comedy on Broadway right now.

New York Daily News

Chris
Jones

July 11, 2024

They have the perfect director, the right supporting cast (Ricamora is both funny in his own right and fully cognizant of whose name is on the marquee) and, crucially, enough crazy political chaos going on outside the theater’s doors that the wackier this show gets, it never feels too much removed from reality.

Tim
Teeman

July 11, 2024

In the best way that only theater can, the hilarity is communally shared by your fellow audience members, who are losing it merrily all around you. For 80 minutes, the Lyceum is a rumbling sea of giggling and guffaws.

Greg
Evans

July 11, 2024

There’s funny, there’s very funny, and then there’s Oh, Mary!, Cole Escola’s riotous new comedy that brings more laughs to Broadway than all the Gutenberg!s, Edelmans and Birbiglias combined. You can throw in Shucked for good measure.

Entertainment Weekly

Christian
Holub

July 11, 2024

Oh, Mary! is laugh-out-loud funny from the first moments; though much of the humor comes from Escola’s unbelievable delivery and the slapstick combination of actors on stage.

David
Rooney

July 11, 2024

The playwright might describe it as stupid, but any comedy that liberates audiences from the despair of the current political climate with 80 minutes of almost uninterrupted laughter is a work of genius.

Sara
Holdren

July 11, 2024

Really, far more than enough — Oh, Mary! is hilarious and, underneath the mayhem, both structurally rock solid and sneakily moving. It may be playing the palace now, but it’s confident enough in its own skin to have resisted any sort of unnecessary makeover.

Johnny
Oleksinski

July 11, 2024

Escola, who New Yorkers will know from Joe’s Pub gigs and TV viewers might recognize from “Search Party,” is conjuring theatrical magic at the Lyceum that must be seen to be believed. And, as the show is so bizarre as to defy description, to be fully grasped. “Oh, Mary!” might not be another theatrical history lesson Broadway is used to, but I reckon it’s a show for the history books.

New York Stage Review

Michael
Sommers

July 11, 2024

A ribald cartoon more hysterical than historical, Oh, Mary! sheds unexpected light upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and represents the latest generation of gender bent comical entertainment known as camp. Elder viewers reared on the comparatively subtle writing and performance style of Charles Busch are likely to find Escola’s slapdash artistry crude, but there’s no denying he snags laughs.

New York Theatre Guide

Austin
Fimmano

July 11, 2024

Together with James Scully as Mary’s handsome drama teacher, Bianca Leigh as Mary’s long-suffering chaperone, and Tony Macht as Abe’s extremely pliant assistant, the entire ensemble elevates very silly jokes into a work of art that keeps you riveted from start to finish. Suffice it to say that when the lights went up after the curtain call, my guest and I agreed we had literally laughed until our faces hurt.

Observer

David
Cote

July 11, 2024

Escola’s splendidly nasty queer romp has hiked up its petticoats and staggered uptown from a sold-out run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, goosing a sleepy Broadway summer. I’m happy to report that although director Sam Pinkleton leveled up the production values (particularly in the musical finale), Oh, Mary! remains the same vicious, dirty-minded, bad-taste farce that delighted camp aficionados last winter. In a theater scene squeezed between the Scylla of nonprofit precarity and Charybdis of commercial desperation, Escola and their team offer audacity, flair, and a homing instinct for the audience funny bone.

Adam
Feldman

July 11, 2024

Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! is not just funny: It is dizzyingly, breathtakingly funny, the kind of funny that ambushes your body into uncontained laughter.

Usa Today

Patrick
Ryan

July 11, 2024

Moving to Broadway after months of breathless hype from critics and theatergoers, it’d be easy to turn up one’s nose at the show, grumbling that something was “lost” in the transfer. But that is certainly not the case here: For any fans of “elegant stories told through song,” Escola’s brilliant lunacy is the real deal. Like the play’s unhinged diva, “Oh, Mary!” will not and should not be ignored.

Robert
Hofler

July 11, 2024

“Oh, Mary!” plays even better on Broadway than it did downtown at the Lucille Lortel Theater earlier this year. Experiencing this comedy with a few hundred more theatergoers takes the laughter from boisterous to atomic and the effect is absolutely radioactive.

Nolan
Boggess

July 11, 2024

The show is also a piece of history. While transferring a peculiar Off-Broadway jewel to a commercial run is not unusual, Oh, Mary! does stand apart from its peers on Broadway. When our Chief Critic Juan A. Ramirez reviewed the show Off-Broadway, he said, if he were inclined to look for a deeper meaning in Oh, Mary!, “it is a rebuttal against the legitimacy, good taste, and ‘straightness’ (if you can believe it) of most self-serious art.” If I were inclined to look further, and verge on sentimentality (yuck), the fact that this piece of radically queer comedy has become the buzziest show of the season is a hopeful sign of work to come.