This season in New York saw everyone from Daniel Radcliffe to Rachel McAdams trodding the boards, but one show captured the theater cognoscenti like no other: Oh, Mary!, the irreverent and intelligent playwriting debut from Cole Escola, which just completed a sold-out run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. After several extensions and ticket prices soaring to the small-fortune category, the play is moving uptown, where it will play a 12-week engagement at the Lyceum Theatre beginning June 26.

Escola (who uses they/them pronouns) first emerged on the scene with the short-lived but beloved Logo series Jeffery & Cole Casserole, and has gone on to memorable stints on several television shows like Difficult People and Search Party. I first became aware of their theatrical acumen when they played the antic Roland Maule in a production of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter at Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey. Yet no primer could properly prepare audiences for Oh, Mary!, which feels as singular as anything seen on stage in the past decade.

Working from an idea that germinated in 2009—and doing “less than no research,” as they recently told Seth Meyers—Escola crafted an uproarious portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln as a washed-up, boozing cabaret chanteuse, yoked to a closeted husband (played with bone-dry with by Conrad Ricamora) and yearning for her own spotlight. Although the script owes debts to the famous absurdist Charles, Ludlam and Busch, Escola’s voice resists easy comparisons. Their work blends maximalist theatrical conventions with an alternative comedy voice, and Sam Pinkleton’s production also leans into that duality. The sets and costumes (by the collective dots and Holly Pierson, respectively) are appropriately ornate, yet the proceedings feel as if they might go off the rails at any moment. That’s as it should be.

Escola is also surrounded by a cast that shares their particular sensibility. Ricamora’s Abraham Lincoln, called simply “Mary’s Husband” here, is starchy one moment and queeny the next. Audiences who know him primarily as the laconic Mr. Darcy stand-in from Fire Island (or the ardently romantic Lun Tha from the 2015-16 Broadway revival of The King and I) will be pleasantly amused by this new guise. James Scully makes for a demented matinee idol, driving the plot in a way I won’t spoil. Tony Macht and Bianca Leigh round out the troupe. They will all be making the leap to Broadway.

It will be intriguing to see how uptown audiences respond to Oh, Mary! Although the premiere at the Lortel seemed spiritually appropriate—it situated Escola in the history of Off-Broadway theater—I wouldn’t be surprised if the play itself, with its broad humor and blatant sight gags, plays better in a larger house. However things shake out, though, having Escola as a bonafide Broadway star is something to celebrate. This summer, there is no more essential show.

Oh, Mary! played Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre from January 26 through May 12, 2024. It transfers to the Lyceum Theatre on June 26 for a run through September 15, 2024.