Imagine Carol Burnett as a drag queen playing Mary Todd Lincoln in one of her classic TV sketches, albeit one jam-packed with four-letter words and an abundance of raunch and you’ve got the National Tour of Cole Escola’s filthy dirty (and absolutely hilarious) Oh, Mary! at the Ahmanson Theatre.

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season Two winner Alaska Thunderfuck stars as Mary, whose most recent drunken binge had her scaling a clock tower, derailing a freight train, and taking a piss all over the Senate floor, or at least that’s how Mary’s Husband (John-Andrew Morrison), aka Mr. President, describes his wife to Mary’s Husband’s Assistant (Michael Lepore).

Further complicating matters is Mary’s desire to return to her former life as a “niche cabaret legend,” and so Mary’s Husband (who’s already got troubles enough ending the war with the South) hires Mary’s Teacher (Wesley Taylor) to redirect his wife’s “artistic” ambitions from cabaret to the more refined art form known as theater.

Completing Oh, Mary!’s cast of characters is Mary’s Chaperone (Pooya Mohseni), on a paid mission to keep Mary sober and out of trouble no matter that Mrs. President may have accidentally pushed her down a flight of stairs.

Oh, Mary! may not be spoofing a cinematic classic like The Carol Burnett Show did with Went With The Wind, Mildred Fierce, and Rancid Harvest, but the result is the same kind of inspired mix of slapskick, one-liners, and absurdity played straight, even by Mary’s flamingly gay Husband, though I don’t ever recall a character in a Burnett sketch giving or getting a blow job.

All of the above adds up to eighty of the most outrageously funny minutes you’ll spend at a theater this pre-holiday season, and though the role of Mary has been played on Broadway by Betty Gilpin, Jane Krakowski, and Maya Rudolph, having seen Alaska Thunderfuck in the role, going the drag route on Oh, Mary!’s national tour (as was the case when playwright Escola starred in the play’s Broadway debut) couldn’t be a more inspired bit of casting. (It helps enormously that in her pre-drag post-high school years, Alaska studied theater at the University of Pittsburgh.)

Director Sam Pinkleton’s background as a Broadway choreographer makes him an ideal choice to stage Oh, Mary!’s physical comedy and even when things get wild and crazy, he keeps performances authentic … and authentically funny.

Thunderfuck is fearless in bringing the narcissistic, boozy, brazen, and ever stagestruck Mary to hilariously unhinged life, not to mention revealing a talent I’m forbidden to discuss in this review.

Morrison, a Best Featured Actor Tony nominee for A Strange Loop, plays a repressed homosexual President like nobody’s business; Taylor’s scrupulously sexy turn as Mary’s hunky Teacher is enhanced by the roundest, firmest buttocks in town; Mohseni is a droll delight as Mary’s long-suffering Chaperone; and Lepore plays Mary’s Husband’s bespectacled twink Assistant with a guileless charm that makes him hard to resist.

Like Thunderfuck’s performance, there is much about Oh, Mary!’s presidential office set (designed by the mononymous lower case dots) that my reviewer’s code does not allow me to give away, but it, like Holly Pierson’s realistic-meets-absurd costumes, Leah J. Loukas’s perfectly matched wigs, and Cha See’s dazzling lighting are all absolutely fabulous, with additional design kudos shared by sound designers Daniel Kluger and Drew Levy (lighting) and Kluger for his jaunty original music.

 Sunny Min-Sook Hitt is associate director. Casting is by Henry Russell Bergstein, CSA. Mike Cefalo, Natalie Joy Johnson, and Julius Thomas III are understudies. Seth F. Barker is production stage manager.

Oh, Mary! may not be for the prudish or more traditionally oriented theatergoer, but anyone who likes to walk on the wild-and-crazy side can expect to have one explosively hilarious time.

Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N Grand Ave, Los Angeles. Through July 19. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7:30. Fridays at 8:00. Saturdays at 2:00 and 8:00. Sundays at 1:00 and 7:00.
www.CenterTheatreGroup.org

–Steven Stanley
November 12, 2026
Photos: Evan Zimmerman for Murphy/Made

Tags: Ahmanson Theatre, Cole Escola, Los Angeles Theater Review