An Old Wives’ Tale

Photo: Matthew Leifheit for New York Magazine

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This portion was primitively published connected February 8, 2024. We are republishing it to people the quality of Oh, Mary! heading to Broadway this summer. Read much astir the quality here.

It’s 28 degrees extracurricular successful mid-January, and Cole Escola is starring maine astir Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery successful hunt of the gravestone of an actress-producer who died successful 1873. “My lips are gone,” Escola tells maine arsenic they clutch their telephone with gloveless hands. We’re spinning around, attempting and failing to travel directions from a operation of Google Maps, Apple Maps, and findagrave.com. They presume the dependable of a prototypical audiobook narrator: “Two faggots locomotion into a cemetery …”

We’re looking for the sedate of Laura Keene, who was performing successful Our American Cousin astatine Ford’s Theatre successful Washington, D.C., erstwhile Abraham Lincoln was changeable successful 1865. Escola chose to bring maine to Keene’s sedate successful grant of their debut play, Oh, Mary!, which they wrote and prima successful arsenic Mary Todd Lincoln successful the days starring up to the assassination of her husband. Keene told radical she had rushed into Lincoln’s container with a solid of h2o and cradled the dying president’s caput successful her arms. Some scholars person since theorized that she lied astir this melodramatic moment, which would marque her a spiritual predecessor of Oh, Mary! One of the show’s cardinal tenets is that the information matters little than a worthwhile fabrication.

The germ of Oh, Mary! began with an email Escola sent themselves successful 2009 asking what it would beryllium similar “if Abe’s assassination wasn’t specified a atrocious happening for Mary.” From there, they did small to nary research. In Oh, Mary!’s telling of history, Mary is simply a erstwhile cabaret prima longing to get backmost to her erstwhile enactment alternatively than stay successful the gilded cage of the White House. (She drinks overgarment thinner to header with this, is forced by her hubby to vomit it up, past drinks the vomit.) Escola’s Mary is conniving, mean, and loud. She schemes and plots her mode backmost to the cabaret signifier by throwing radical down stairs, verbally destroying an acting coach, and screaming astatine her husband. Escola calls Mary a “Miss Piggy type” — she’s akin to an histrion who wants to play Juliet but is meant to play the nurse. Even arsenic her behaviour grows deranged, Escola manages to get audiences truthful engrossed successful Mary’s headspace that they travel to cheer connected Abe’s decease close on with her.

Escola, 37, is chiefly known arsenic a comedian and TV actor. They gained attraction successful 2008 for YouTube videos successful which they played characters some based connected existent radical and of their ain imagination: a loopy diva similar Bernadette Peters, the depressed busybody Joyce Conner, a ma successful an orange-juice commercialized truthful dedicated to her children that it drives her to violence. They’ve been a regular connected Search Party and Difficult People, and successful some they brought the thought of the “demon twink” to its afloat villainous conclusion. In each venues, their enactment feels someway of a portion with classical cheery artistry — they get referred to arsenic “camp” a lot, a descriptor they spot arsenic “not lazy, but not thorough” — and circumstantial to them. More recently, they’ve released longer communicative productions similar Our Home Out West and Pee Pee Manor connected YouTube, successful which their characters often talk successful a luxurious legato with an occasional chop of a operation that cuts done everything astir it. In Pee Pee Manor, aft the main quality is warned by townsfolk done ominous monologues to not determination into her caller location owing to its erstwhile owners’ unnatural deaths, she quips, “Accidents happen. Look astatine Pearl Harbor.” Their works are exquisitely rendered artifacts of stupidity with a handmade prime that makes them consciousness little similar the progressively polished queer media we’ve been inundated with of late, from Matthew López’s The Inheritance to Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, and much similar portion of an breathtaking caller procreation of slapdash queerness indebted to John Waters alongside Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson’s Dicks: The Musical.

Escola was calved successful Clatskanie, Oregon, a municipality of 1,700 people. When they were 5 years old, their household moved retired of a trailer, distant from Escola’s father, and successful with their grandmother, who was their superior genitor for a while. She was a grandma’s grandma — “Gray perm, atom pudding, doilies; she made clothes, and she could knit and crochet and bake” — and accepted Escola’s latent fagginess without fuss, buying them their archetypal Barbie without immoderate curiosity astir wherefore they would privation it. Other household members would promote their femininity successful a mode that felt excessively pointed: “It was always, ‘You tin play with this if you want.’ And that felt like, ‘Well, present I consciousness similar I shouldn’t beryllium playing with it due to the fact that you’re making it look odd.’”

They realized they were nonbinary (without the label) upon seeing the publication screen for A Child Called “It” erstwhile they were 10. The memoir, by Dave Pelzer, is astir a lad who is dehumanized and abused by his parents, but Escola didn’t work it, truthful the rubric seemed positive. “I retrieve thinking, like, Oh my God, that’s me. I’m not a boy. I’m not a girl. I’m it,” they recall. “I had 2 friends, and we would usage the it pronoun to picture each other. Not successful nationalist oregon thing but conscionable successful private. Between us. We called ourselves ‘the Its.’” When they came retired arsenic nonbinary successful 2020, they astir utilized it arsenic their pronoun of prime but opted against it due to the fact that “I was like, Don’t beryllium other annoying.”

If they knew they were an it astatine 10, they knew they were mediocre overmuch earlier. “I hated my household truthful overmuch for being achromatic trash,” they say, though Escola didn’t telephone them that astatine the time. The archetypal divas they worshipped were homemakers, similar their grandma, but skewed upper-middle people — opening with Kanga from Winnie-the-Pooh; progressing to Mrs. Potts, who lasted done property 8; past landing connected Martha Stewart. Over 1 summertime erstwhile they were a tween, they would regularly enactment up until 5 a.m. to ticker episodes of Martha Stewart Living. They spent their day wealth connected Christmas decorations and idolized wealthy, blase characters similar Christine Baranski’s Maryann Thorpe connected Cybill, realizing, arsenic galore gays person earlier them, that if they couldn’t beryllium cosmopolitan done money, they would person to bash it done culture.

When they were 16, they moved successful with their relative to spell to a precocious schoolhouse successful Longview, Washington, that had a play program. (Subconsciously, the determination was besides owed to the information that they felt similar they’d beryllium capable to travel retired successful a caller place.) Escola had learned to beryllium comic successful precocious mediate schoolhouse and aboriginal precocious schoolhouse due to the fact that it meant they got bullied less. “As agelong arsenic there’s going to beryllium attraction connected me, I mightiness arsenic good bid it myself,” they say. They hated schoolhouse but ended up enrolling astatine Marymount Manhattan College successful New York successful bid to travel their fellow astatine the time: “I was like, I request to beryllium adjacent him oregon termination myself.” The 2 broke up earlier schoolhouse started, but Escola inactive made the determination successful 2005. After their freshman year, they dropped retired due to the fact that they couldn’t instrumentality retired immoderate much loans without a guarantor.

The pursuing twelvemonth and a fractional successful New York was not good. Escola was, successful nary peculiar order, “suicidal, bulimic, lonely, and depressed.” They got a occupation astatine the Scholastic Bookstore, wherever they alternately worked arsenic a cashier, hosted day parties, and, sometimes for events, dressed up arsenic Clifford the Big Red Dog. One day, their person sent Escola a pantsuit that made them wonderment if they could walk arsenic an older woman. “I dressed up successful it, and I had this fake-fur coat, and I did horrible frosted constitution and spiked my hair,” they recall. Escola gave her a sanction — Joyce Conner — and took a locomotion successful quality astir the Upper East Side. “Because I was suicidal astatine that time, I thought, Wouldn’t it beryllium comic if I was having my thoughts, but arsenic her? ‘I’ve got to termination myself Saturday.’ What if this busybody pistillate was reasoning astir her termination arsenic if it was a luncheon she was having connected Sunday?” Suddenly, adjacent though they were inactive reasoning astir suicide, they felt happy.

Soon after, a person of Escola’s made a pupil movie astir Joyce, which Escola showed to Dan Fishback, a playwright and performer they were seeing astatine the time. Fishback encouraged Escola to execute successful Bushwick arsenic the character, inviting them to unfastened for anti-folk bands, a genre that began successful the 1980s arsenic a mode to rebel against the glossiness and rigidity of mainstream people music. “Joyce was a large portion of the Brooklyn anti-folk country for astir six months successful 2008,” Escola says. That year, they posted their archetypal video arsenic Joyce to YouTube (“Joyce Conner Survives the Heat,” successful which Joyce says she attempted to termination herself a fewer months anterior earlier realizing the pills she swallowed were vitamin-D supplements). Over the adjacent fewer years, they built their assemblage much consistently; they performed live, doing quality sets and cabaret, some connected their ain and arsenic portion of Bridget Everett’s 2013 amusement Rock Bottom, successful which they played a fetus. By 2015, they were formed connected Difficult People, and, successful 2017, they became a recurring impermanent connected At Home With Amy Sedaris. Oh, Mary! is Escola’s archetypal full-scale unrecorded production, involving aggregate sets, 4 different actors (including Conrad Ricamora, caller disconnected starring the Broadway accumulation of Here Lies Love, arsenic Abraham Lincoln), and a director, Sam Pinkleton, who conscionable worked arsenic the choreographer for Stephen Sondheim’s last musical, Here We Are.

As we trek done the cemetery fields, veering disconnected the paths, the speech turns backmost to divas. Escola loves pre-Code movies, and they person a peculiar fascination with Barbara Stanwyck — “You can’t drawback her acting” — whose mother, Kathryn Ann Stevens, is besides buried successful Green-Wood. When they lived nearby, Escola would travel to the cemetery conscionable to sojourn Stevens’s grave. The archetypal clip they traveled to Europe, they went to Marlene Dietrich’s burial tract successful Berlin and the flat successful Paris wherever she died. “I emotion Dietrich,” they say. “I didn’t similar erstwhile she wore suits.” We stock an obsession with Elaine Stritch. “Her endowment aside, she represents this aureate property of Broadway and New York — the benignant of New York that I dreamed of but I ne'er could beryllium a portion of erstwhile I was a kid.”

Escola’s narration with audiences is complicated: “I’m frightened of them. I hatred them. I resent them. I look down connected them. I request them.” In 2016, Julio Torres invited them to execute their archetypal unrecorded drama acceptable connected a lineup astatine Williamsburg venue. They hated it. “You person 3 radical earlier you who are doing stand-up that’s precise conversational. Then I travel onstage, and each of a abrupt there’s a 4th partition and I’m pulling the wig out,” they explain. “I tin consciousness the assemblage go, Ugh.” Growing up, their property (sincere, feminine, loud) was considered obnoxious by household members and peers alike. “My biggest fearfulness and biggest content astir myself,” they say, “is that I’m truly annoying.”

But, successful Oh, Mary!, they’ve designed a relation successful which annoyance is the goal. Escola is successful full power of the signifier arsenic Mary Todd Lincoln. The amusement is simply a pastiche of the melodramas Escola loves — they telephone themselves “a maudlin aged queen” — with each the screaming that entails. It’s a subtly tricky part: Because Mary is truthful impulsive, adjacent a flicker of Escola anticipating her adjacent enactment would ruin the joke; her mania is astir thrilling erstwhile the assemblage doesn’t cognize what’s coming next. But Escola appears wholly successful the moment, letting the assemblage into Mary’s thought process truthful that it is rapt due to the fact that of not lone their words but their face. After Mary drinks that bucket of vomited-up overgarment thinner, Escola lays their full assemblage backmost successful their spot with the self-satisfied grin of idiosyncratic who conscionable eked retired a conflict triumph successful the midst of a hard war. It brings down the house.

Finally, we get astatine Keene’s grave, wherever 1 astir decayed angiosperm is already resting. We region the integrative from our Trader Joe’s bouquet of yellowish roses — chosen due to the fact that they were the flowers astatine Escola’s grandmother’s ceremonial — and spot them down. “Please don’t fto the ghosts of Abraham and Mary ruin my show,” Escola implores Keene. “Please support maine from atrocious reviews. And I anticipation you’re proud. Love you.”

If you are successful crisis, delight telephone the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 for free, anonymous enactment and resources.