‘I think Abe Lincoln might be a leather daddy’: Mason Alexander Park on bringing cult comedy Oh Mary! to the West End (EXCLUSIVE)
The performer talks to Attitude about playing a delightfully unhinged Mary Todd Lincoln, as Cole Escola’ Tony-winning hit opens in London
By Dale Fox
Broadway smash Oh, Mary! has officially opened in the West End, bringing with it a reputation for unadultered chaos, as well as its new leading lady Mason Alexander Park.
Written by Cole Escola [see here for our recent Cole Escola interview], the one-act comedy reimagines 1800s US First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln as a volatile, booze-fuelled would-be cabaret star trapped inside the White House.
Debuting in 2024, the role has already built a cult lineage. Escola originated Mary off-Broadway and on Broadway, followed by a succession of disparate performers including Betty Gilpin, Titus Burgess and Jinkx Monsoon, with Jane Krakowski currently taking on the role in New York.
Park is the first to bring Mary to the West End, and with the London run now underway, their performance has quickly become one of the most talked-about elements of the show.
We sat down with the The Sandman star to talk about bringing Oh, Mary! to London, stepping into such an unhinged role, and why now feels like exactly the right moment for a show this silly.
How does it feel returning to the West End?
It’s such a treat. I’ve done two West End shows in the past year with Jamie Lloyd – The Tempest at Drury Lane with Sigourney Weaver, and then Much Ado About Nothing with Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell, which finished in April. So it’s been about eight months since I last did theatre here. What’s really lovely is getting to do something so uproariously funny and joyful. I think I got a taste of that with Much Ado, because it was such a celebratory piece that made people skip out of the theatre. Having been introduced to British audiences in quite dark, intense roles, it’s nice to be doing the opposite for a while.
Where are you based these days?
After Cabaret, I moved here permanently, so I’ve been living in London full-time for almost two years now. I’d been coming back and forth for about five years before that, starting when I first came over to film The Sandman during the pandemic. Back then, everything was shut, so I didn’t really get to experience London properly. Now, all my references are very local to where I live. Honestly, being able to take the Tube to my house is how I know I’m in London.
Press night has just happened. Any gossip?
It’s a bit of a blur, to be honest. The show is 80 minutes of pure chaos, so from the second it begins I have to be completely locked in. I go into this hyper-focused trance and you don’t really come down until the bows. The party afterwards felt like an extension of that. I was overwhelmed with gratitude by how many people came, but those nights are tricky because you never get to see everyone you want to. I also had another show the next day, so I behaved myself. I’ve got to be a menace on stage, so I can’t be a menace off stage. I was being a very good girl.
You had some big names in the audience like Richard E. Grant and Joe Locke – what was that like?
It was really nice to see so many people that I’ve admired who have become friends, because I think the theatre community here is so unique. Richard E. Grant is someone I’ve never worked with before, but Richard came and saw Much Ado, and we’ve been in contact ever since. Everyone who’s in this business and lives in this town in particular, I think has such a love for the theatre and for the people that do theatre, which is really special and really unique to London in particular.
Mary Todd Lincoln is such an iconic figure. How did you approach playing her?
Mary, as I said, is a menace, but she’s amazing. She is this person who has so much within her. She has so many gifts that she is desperate to share with the world and feels like because of her position in life, and because of her husband and because of the world around her, that she’s so kept from the thing that will make her happy. And I think everybody can relate to that. She is so absurd and her mood swings are intense and her energy is so intense. A friend sent me a quote from something in relation to press night that called me a poltergeist, and I’ve never laughed harder. I was like, yeah, that is an accurate way to describe my Mary Todd Lincoln.
The role is very physical. What can audiences expect?
Famously, [Mary’s] husband is the president of the United States, so much of the play takes place in the Oval Office, which is just a small room with some double doors and a desk. There are some moments that occur on that desk that are just pure, ridiculous physical comedy. There’s a moment where she gets stuck on it and can’t figure out a way to get down. I think everybody loves that bit in the show. There’s just so much physical comedy in this play, and I feel like it goes through so many different styles of comedy. It was written by someone who clearly has such a love for many different comedic styles, which I think is why it’s connected with so many different audiences.
Did any of the other Mary performances influence your own?
I was very lucky to see Cole [as Mary]. I saw their third to last performance after winning the Tony Award. I happened to be in New York on a work trip doing a show of my own off-Broadway, and I knew I had two nights I could go see some theatre. So I immediately booked Oh, Mary! and Maybe Happy Ending, which one of my friends, Darren Criss, is the lead of. It was the most incredible performance I’ve ever seen. Cole was a beast on stage, an absolute monster. The writing is so snippy, and their command and control of all of their talents was breathtaking. It really is one of the top three performances that I’ve ever seen in my life. I was buzzing. I got to meet them backstage that night, and at the same time, the conversation around the show coming here and around me maybe being someone who could do it had just started a few days before I saw it.
The play leans into the idea of Abe Lincoln as a closeted gay man. If he were alive today, what kind of gay would he be?
Very good question. In the play, he’s so repressed that he sort of takes on a bit of a dommy energy. He’s got a very daddy vibe. So I think, honestly, he might be a leather daddy.
And Mary – if she were alive today and had never met Abe, what would she be doing?
If she’d never met Abe, I think she would have pursued her dreams of being a stage star so much earlier on. Meeting at the cabaret where she was working and then finding each other and becoming married – it was such a turning point in her life that completely stilted all of her dreams. So I think without Abe, she would have been Ethel Merman or Patti LuPone – one of those remarkable forces on stage that are amazing to watch and also slightly terrifying to be around.
Finally, sell Oh, Mary! to us.
Oh, it’s gay and it’s fun. Like, what more could you want? It is so fun. The world is so dark right now. Just come and have a laugh.
Tickets for Oh, Mary! are available now on the Trafalgar Theatre website, with bookings running until April 2026.