Cole Escola’s ‘Oh, Mary!’ is a hoot, but the Tony should go to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ ‘Purpose’

“Oh, Mary!” is poised to have a big night at the Tony Awards on Sunday. A campy melodrama by alt comic Cole Escola, the play conjures to the stage a vision of Mary Todd Lincoln as a harridan and drunk, who’s sick of the restraints being placed on her at the White House and desperate to return to her first love, cabaret.

As played by Escola, the First Lady is a tramp with a showbiz dream and an unslakable thirst for whiskey. Poor Mary has reason to be in a state of spiraling turmoil. Husband Abraham Lincoln (Conrad Ricamora), wary of Mary’s scandalous behavior, has placed her booze under lock and key.

The Civil War, which is jeopardizing his presidency, has turned him into an utter killjoy. Overcome with stress, he’s finding it harder than ever to resist his homosexual urges. He prays for willpower, but his assistant (Tony Macht) is all too willing to go above and beyond the call of duty.

The production, directed by Sam Pinkleton, plays this delirious situation to the comic hilt. Melodramatic tropes, from the striking of over-the-top poses to thunderous piano underscoring during moments of rising tension, situate “Oh, Mary!” in a bygone theatrical universe.

Escola’s Mary, dressed like a 19th century version of Wednesday Addams from “The Addams Family,” can’t contain herself. Don’t let the rouged cheeks and Shirley Temple curls fool you. That demonic glint in her eye isn’t a ruse.

Escola is part of a wave of comics, along with Megan Stalter, who built their fan bases by posting comic vignettes on social media during the pandemic. Both were crucial mental health resources during that dark time, and both found a wider embrace online for their niche comic sensibilities.

“Oh, Mary!,” which had its premiere off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre last year, has become the mascot production of the Broadway season. It’s the unexpected hit that proves that, while there are no sure bets anymore on Broadway, success is more likely when artists are allowed the courage of their crackpot convictions.

I’m elated for “Oh, Mary!,” but I think it would be a mistake to reward the show’s giddy Broadway triumph with the Tony for best play. The category is too rich to be treated as a popularity contest this year. Artistic discernment is called for when deciding among works as good as these.

The cast of the Broadway production of “Purpose.”

(Marc J. Franklin)

The race includes two plays that received the Pulitzer Prize, the 2023 winner, Sanaz Toossi’s “English” and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ newly awarded “Purpose.” Jez Butterworth, who won the 2019 Tony for his play “The Ferryman,” has outdone himself with “The Hills of California,” the fall season’s best (and most intricately woven) drama, magisterially directed by Sam Mendes. And “John Proctor Is the Villain,” Kimberly Belflower’s reconsideration of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” thrillingly staged by Danya Taymor, is perhaps the feat of playwriting that surprised me most in this group.

“Oh, Mary!” ought to receive a special citation. Not only is it in a category of its own, but it doesn’t bear comparison with the other nominees. And this point of view has nothing to do with any bias against camp. In fact, it’s my deep affection for the genre that has compelled me to raise what I assume will be an unpopular opinion.

In her landmark 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’,” Susan Sontag observed that the “whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to ‘the serious.’ One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.”

The silliness of “Oh, Mary!” shouldn’t be held against it. Artistic worthiness isn’t measured by gravity of subject matter. But there’s something mainstream about Escola’s outrageous flamboyance — it’s camp for “The Carol Burnett Show” crowd.

Sontag noted that camp functions as “a private code, a badge of identity even.” I wasn’t sure who “Oh, Mary!” was pitched to, but it didn’t seem intended for someone whose camp sensibility was forged watching the plays of Charles Ludlam at the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in Greenwich Village or the drag headliners of East Village bars and clubs that made such an impression on me in the 1980s and 1990s.

That was a bleak period to be coming of age in New York. The AIDS crisis left the gay community in a state of mournful siege. Camp offered sanctuary, a mode of performance that didn’t suffer hypocritical fools gladly. There was something transgressive and liberating about an aesthetic that inverted not only good and bad taste but also conventional and unconventional morality.

“Oh, Mary!” is fearlessly raunchy but never is it truly dangerous. The show is both a novelty on Broadway and completely at home there. The audience members laughing the hardest on a recent visit to the Lyceum Theatre were the older married couples who found it risqué enough to enjoy but not so risqué that it might upend their thinking of right and wrong.

As a spoof of melodrama, it is sprightly, crisply executed and untaxingly entertaining. Part of the appeal of “Oh, Mary!” is that it just wants to give audiences a concentrated dose of hilarity. Escola recognizes the importance of not being earnest. But the mainstream success the show is enjoying is a sign of something more subversive being watered down.

The Tony nominating committee has demonstrated remarkable judgment this year. Let’s hope Tony voters follow suit and give one of the other four best play nominees the award. If forced to pick a winner, I would opt for “Purpose,” Jacobs-Jenkins’ engrossing family drama set in the household of a civil rights icon, whose personal and public morality haven’t always been aligned.

Any concise description of “Purpose” is bound to fail because the play is so multifarious and complex. Jacobs-Jenkins has written a domestic drama in the epic tradition of “Death of a Salesman,” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “August: Osage County.”

The playwright has pursued this line before in “Appropriate,” which won the Tony for best revival last year. But here the focus is on a Black family grappling both with the burdens and privileges of a father’s unique legacy and the difficulty of adapting to changing times and new frontiers of political struggle.

Whenever you think you know which way “Purpose” is heading, it veers off in an unexpected direction. The play leaves the mundane world to engage in spiritual questions between an old-school father (Harry Lennix) and his independent-minded youngest son, Nazareth (Jon Michael Hill), who left divinity school to become a nature photographer.

“Naz,” as he’s known, serves as the play’s narrator. And as someone who identifies as asexual and is possibly on the spectrum, he brings a bracingly original perspective to the classic homecoming play, updating the genre for the 21st century.

“Purpose” deserves an extensive life after Broadway, and a Tony would help its producing prospects. The Steppenwolf Theatre production at the Helen Hayes Theater, directed by Phylicia Rashad and featuring one of the best ensemble casts of the season, is intimidatingly good. (LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Lennix, Hill, Glenn Davis and Kara Young were all nominated for their work, but the company really deserves a collective award.)

It’s a long play (nearly three hours), and one you might not care to see performed with second-tier performers. A Tony would create more incentive for regional theaters to rise to the challenge, though with a Pulitzer, New York Drama Critics’ Award and Drama Desk Award, “Purpose” is hardly lacking in accolades.

There was a time not so long ago when the future of the Broadway play was in serious doubt. The threat hasn’t gone away, and Tony voters shouldn’t pass up an opportunity to honor true playwriting excellence.