Tony and Obie Award-winning actor, writer and director John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) will return to Broadway in Cole Escola‘s hit play Oh, Mary! for a limited 12-week engagement this winter, the show’s producers announced today. He’ll play – who else? – Mary Todd Lincoln, the role originated by the playwright.
Mitchell’s will begin performances at the Lyceum Theatre on Tuesday, February 3, 2026, performing in the role through April 26, 2026.
“Cole Escola and [director] Sam Pinkleton are the wild horses that dragged me back to drag and I couldn’t be happier!” said Mitchell in a statement. “As the most mature Mary yet, my days are filled with working the StairMaster™, mainlining Ozempic® and mastering my Brilliant Dialogue©. ‘Line?!’ Thank you, Cole, may I do you proud mangling your classic!”
Said the Tony-winning Pinkleton, “Welcoming John into this cast feels both delicious and somehow inevitable. So many of us in the Oh, Mary! Universe, myself very much included, wouldn’t be where we are without John’s work, which reshaped what live performance could look and feel like for generations of tender weirdos. He’s a queer trailblazer, cultural icon, brilliant actor — and, most importantly for his new role, a giant idiot.”
Mitchell will be the latest to don the famously bratty curly wig, from the Tony-winning playwright to Jane Krakowski, the current Mary Todd Lincoln through January 4. Others who have played the role on Broadway include Tituss Burgess, Betty Gilpin, Hannah Solow, and Jinkx Monsoon, who returns to the show for an encore engagement on January 8, 2026. Solow will play the title role on January 6 and 7.
Oh, Mary! opened on Broadway on July 11, 2024, at the Lyceum, where it became the first show in the theater’s 121-year history to gross more than $1,000,000 in a single week. Oh, Mary! has since broken its own box office record twelve times, and became the first show of the 2024-25 Broadway season to recoup its investment.
Oh, Mary! is produced on Broadway by Kevin McCollum & Lucas McMahon and Mike Lavoie & Carlee Briglia with Bob Boyett, The Council, Jean Doumanian Productions, Nicole Eisenberg, Jay Marcus & George Strus, Irony Point, Richard Batchelder/Bradley Reynolds, Tyler Mount/Tommy Doyle, Nelson & Tao, Palomares & Rosenberg, and ShowTown Productions.
Mitchell co-wrote (with Stephen Trask) and was the original star of the 1998 rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which was made into a film in 2001. Other Broadway acting credits include the original casts of The Secret Garden, Six Degrees of Separation and Big River. Off Broadway credits include Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me and Lincoln Center’s Hello Again.
