‘Oh, Mary!’ Broadway Review: A New Star Moves Uptown to Wow the Masses

July 11, 2024 goes down as a historic night on Broadway.

“Oh, Mary!” opened Thursday at the Lyceum Theatre after a successful run Off Broadway, and Cole Escola, the show’s author and star, achieves what such crossdressing trailblazers as Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch were never allowed to do. Busch’s one shot at Broadway came in 2000 when his comedy “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” opened, starring Linda Lavin and followed by Valerie Harper and Rhea Perlman in the lead role. No plans were ever made for Busch to impersonate the character of Upper West Side matron Marjorie Taub, despite his having played the female lead in more than a dozen plays he wrote before and since “Allergist’s Wife.”