Another Man Will Put On A Dress To Play Mary Lincoln In Broadway Show

Comedian Bowen Yang has been the latest actor cast in the lead role of the Broadway show “Oh, Mary!” 

Yang isn’t the first male star to put on a dress to portray the wife of President Abraham Lincoln. Several other non-binary, gender non-conforming, and gay men have been in the role previously as part of the shtick. Yang discussed the unique spin he’ll put on the character in terms of gender.

“I’m not afraid to be masculine in this Mary,” Yang said in an interview with Vulture. “Mary having a complete delusion about her skills versus how other people perceive her feels very male to me, in a way that I relate with.” 

Director Sam Pinkleton told the outlet he has high expectations for the former “SNL” cast member. “I think Bowen’s Mary will be particularly intense,” he said. “Bowen’s Mary might be a real viper. She will be very strong.”

Yang will succeed current star Meg Stalter, who began her own run July 6 and is set to continue through September 12. Other men who have filled the role include Tituss Burgess, Jinkx Monsoon (a drag queen who identifies as a woman but is a man), and John Cameron Mitchell.

The show premiered off-Broadway in 2024 in a run that was extended three times before being transferred to Broadway later that year. It’s currently at the Lyceum Theatre, breaking a record there as the first show in the theatre’s history to gross more than $1 million in one week.

According to the show’s description, “Oh, Mary!” is a fictional account of the first lady in the days leading up to one of the most infamous assassinations of all time.

“Oh, Mary! is a dark comedy about a miserable, suffocated Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Unrequited yearning, alcoholism, and suppressed desires abound in this 80-minute one-act play that finally examines the forgotten life and dreams of Mrs. Lincoln, through the lens of an idiot (playwright Cole Escola),” it says.

Yang said he was offered the role before but turned it down. Now that he’s left “SNL,” he’s ready to take on the responsibility, which he decided after seeing the show for the fifth time.

“It’s a show that is at first about regrets, in the way that I regretted letting this offer go,” Yang told Vulture. “Mary feels trapped by her own decisions and then she understands that it is, in fact, other people’s decisions that have sort of kept her in this place.”

Yang decided to leave “SNL” after being a cast member for seven seaons because he “never felt central” to the show. “I never played the dad or the straight-man teacher. I was always there as the seasoning,” the comedian said earlier this summer.