Oh, Mary! West End Review: Mason Alexander Park Is Hysterical

Just over a year ago, on holiday in New York, I watched the comedy Oh, Mary! on Broadway, having previously heard nothing but glowing things. I found it vulgar, chaotic and a celebration of some of humankind’s worst impulses.

At the centre of it all was Cole Escola, both the writer and original star of Oh, Mary!, which reimagines former First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln as a spoiled, tyrannical alcoholic, drowning her sorrows over the fact that her husband is too wrapped up in the Civil War to let her pursue her first love of cabaret.

Earlier this year, Cole deservedly won their first Tony for their high-energy leading performance (dressed, naturally, as Broadway icon Bernadette Peters), and as the show has only gone from strength-to-strength, a West End transfer felt inevitable.

Well, as of this week, Mary has now made her dramatic leap across the pond, officially setting up residence at London’s Trafalgar Theatre. But much as I loved Oh, Mary! during its Broadway run, I did have some quiet concerns over exactly how well it would translate for UK audiences, particularly as Mary Todd Lincoln and her story are so less familiar to Brits than our cousins across the Atlantic. Would certain tweaks need to be put in place to help UK audiences understand the story? And how would that affect the flow of what was, by this point, already a well-oiled machine on Broadway?

Then, there was the question of Mary herself. Since Cole Escola stepped down from playing the role, word-of-mouth around Oh, Mary!’s Broadway iteration has only continued to grow, helped by the array of legendary stage performers, cult figures and even the odd A-lister that have drafted in for short runs in the cast over the last year.

In October, it was announced that Mason Alexander Park would be the UK’s inaugural Mary, which felt like a risky casting choice to open the show as, while they were lauded for their performance in the current West End production of Cabaret in 2023, they haven’t quite reached household name status on this side of the Atlantic.

Having now seen Oh, Mary!’s West End iteration, though, I shouldn’t have had doubts on any front.

Aside from the briefest of SparkNotes history lessons in voiceover form, the show remains entirely unchanged in its West End form. Despite British audiences’ looser grasp of US history, every joke still landed, every twist still prompted audible gasps, (probably helped by the fact that the events of Oh, Mary! are so far removed from reality that only the loosest grasp of the facts is really needed) and every single person was on their feet come curtain call.

As for the cast, Giles Terrera and Kate O’Donnell both shone as Mary’s Husband and Mary’s Chaperone, but there’s no denying that Mason is the MVP of the whole thing, and it’s obvious that they were cast as Mary simply because they’re absolutely brilliant at it.

Effectively a cross between a drunken Queen Of Hearts from Alice In Wonderland and Miss Piggy in peak tantrum mode (it’s perhaps no coincidence that Cole Escola’s next project is a stand-alone movie based on the Muppets diva), Mason gives a high-energy, tour de force performance as Mary that doesn’t let up for one moment.

On stage, Mason’s Mary is a more physically imposing presence than Cole’s, which makes laughing at her tirades feel that little bit naughtier, but through various twists that it would be near-criminal to spoil, they manage to take us all on something of an emotional journey, to the point you find that you can’t help rooting for a character who just moments ago you found utterly despicable. Mason truly deserves all of the adulation that’s about to come their way for their work in Oh, Mary!, and an Olivier nomination to match Cole’s Tony win already feels like an inevitability (I’ll be leading the outcry if, through some injustice, they’re overlooked).

What a relief that in its West End form, Oh, Mary! remains just as outrageous, hysterically funny and genuinely unpredictable as its Broadway counterpart.

But even taking its more ridiculous and subversive elements out of the equation, Oh, Mary! is also just a remarkable piece of theatre all-round – the costumes and sets immediately transport you to another world that you can’t look away from for the full 80-minute runtime, every movement on-stage is choreographed to the letter and there’s not a single member of the cast letting the side down. It also can’t be understated how joyful it is in the current climate to see something this unapologetically queer that’s main objective is to make you laugh.

Cast any unfounded concerns you might have about this play might getting lost in translation aside and see Mason Alexander Park in action while you can.

Oh, Mary! at the Trafalgar Theatre is booking until 25 April 2026.