Mason Alexander Park on starring in the brattiest show in town 'Oh, Mary!'

Cole Escola’s riotous comedy Oh, Mary! has arrived in the West End. Get to know the show’s new First Lady Mason Alexander Park, as they finally put on that famous bratty wig.

Summary

• Cole Escola's comedy about the First Lady of the United States Mary Todd Lincoln opens in the West End in December
• Mason Alexander Park plays the titular lead Mary
• Park is best known for screen roles in The Sandman and Quantum Leap as well as stage shows such as Cabaret and Hedwig and the Angry Inch

“I’ve been a fan of Cole since I was a foetus,” says Mason Alexander Park, star of the West End’s newest hot-ticket show Oh, Mary! at the Trafalgar Theatre. They are speaking, of course, about the play’s madcap creator Cole Escola, who won a Tony Award for their performance earlier this year as America’s First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in what has been variously described by critics as “a historical fever dream”, “a gloriously deranged historical romp”, and “a smartly stupid riot”.

The play is, by its own admission, one of the silliest shows to hit Broadway in recent years, and through a mixture of cabaret, raucous comedy, and an iconic ‘bratty’ wig, reimagines President Lincoln’s final days in office before his assassination at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. No longer confined to the back pages of history, Escola’s take on Mary — here portrayed as an alcoholic and wannabe cabaret star — takes centre stage.

Notably, the role has been performed by people of all genders. Escola is a non-binary actor, as is Park, who uses they/them and she/her pronouns and says “it’s such a singular role, and it’s designed for singular performers”. She adds affectionately: “Naturally, it’s going to attract freaks. There are certain roles in the theatre canon that are for strange, special, weird people, and they’re few and far between.”

The versatile performer, known for breakthrough screen roles in The Sandman, Quantum Leap, and Cowboy Bebop, as well as stage successes such as Cabaret, originally hails from the US, and was born in Virginia, before moving to states such as Texas, North Carolina, Delaware, and California. While Park does not come from a musical family, their parents were supportive from a young age, getting them to try a variety of extracurricular activities until finding one that “stuck”. It was as a teenager living in North Carolina that they began to audition for community theatre gigs, before taking acting classes and attending an arts school.

Growing up, Park says the musical Cabaret “unlocked something in my brain” because it gave them hope for casting of non-binary and trans performers. She cites Alan Cumming, who won a Tony Award for his Emcee, as being hugely influential for his ability “to play people of different genders and expressions”, and in 2023 Park made their West End debut in the same role in Rebecca Frecknall’s acclaimed production.

Actor and Hedwig and the Angry Inch writer John Cameron Mitchell also had a big impact: Park played the titular role in the first US national tour of the show. They even have a tattoo on each wrist commemorating their time in the rock musical. “[Mitchell] has been in my life for a decade now,” they say, with the pair also collaborating on the hugely popular Netflix fantasy series The Sandman. “Manifest your heroes!”

In the past year, Park’s star has only continued to rise. They played an eerie, ethereal Ariel opposite Sigourney Weaver in The Tempest, as part of Jamie Lloyd’s Shakespeare season at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. They acknowledge the pressure of taking on the Bard for the first time in a city steeped in so much theatre history: “I was terrified. If there ever were a worse place to try your hand at Shakespeare, it’s in London,” she says jokingly.

Park says that during rehearsals “Jamie, Fabian [Aloise, choreographer], and I were absolute menaces. We were having too much fun and not getting enough done.” Once the process started, Lloyd “coyly” approached Park and asked if they’d also want to star as Miranda in his Much Ado About Nothing with Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell. “I thought The Tempest would be my first and last Shakespeare,” laughs Park.

And now comes the whirlwind that is Mary. On her approach to the role, Park says in her signature smoky voice: “She's showbiz, she is all of the amazing women like Judy Garland that I fell in love with as a younger performer. Those remarkably brittle but formidable women who have so much to give and so much power within them. There's a reason why queer people idolise that kind of archetype.

“My Mary is akin to those women. I think she is every bit Old Hollywood glamour and demon and Cookie Monster and Barbra Streisand. It's fun playing with the highs and lows of the character, and really creating someone who's incredibly relatable, even though they're a terror.”

The play has a brisk running time of 80 minutes, yet stamina will be Park’s greatest challenge. Speaking about rehearsals, they say: “It’s up there with the harder, more physically and vocally demanding shows I’ve ever done. We did a runthrough of it yesterday, and I was like, ‘Either I’m 80 years old already, or this is a really hard part.’”

Reflecting on Escola’s performance, Park says: “Cole was an animal, a stage beast, in that role. It will remain within the top five theatrical experiences of my life. Audiences are so well trained to expect all kinds of shenanigans — we know when the tap number is going to happen. There is a formula to a lot of theatre, and while Oh, Mary! still utilises formula, it also has the element of surprise.”

Broadway audiences have similarly voted with their feet, and the production has extended multiple times to the surprise and delight of its creator, who originally thought the show’s off Broadway debut might be its pinnacle. Does Park have any concerns about how the play will be received by West End audiences, who are famed for being more buttoned up than their American cousins?

“Oh, Mary! is relentless, and it’s not a play that leaves room for the audience to have extended moments of laughter. The play will do what the play does, whether they’re along for the ride or not,” they say before pausing. “While American audiences are a lot more aggressively supportive of things, I’ve been so beautifully surprised by all of my experiences in the West End. I think the audience is so remarkably engaged.” Perhaps this will be the show to break our polite exterior?

“London is a naughty town full of really naughty, dirty people who love silly humour. This show delivers on every level of silliness and naughtiness,” they add, with a cheeky glint in their eye.

But will we get it? “Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States and he had a wife named Mary Todd Lincoln. That is all that an audience really needs to know. He was shot at the theatre by an actor named John Wilkes Booth. The play requires no historical context beyond that.”

Park is joined in the cast by Giles Terera (who won the 2018 Olivier Award for best actor in a musical for his portrayal of Aaron Burr in Hamilton) as Mary’s Husband, with Fool Me Once and Years and Years star Dino Fetscher as Mary’s Teacher, Kate O’Donnell as Mary’s Chaperone, and Oliver Stockley as Mary’s Husband’s Assistant. Park believes that director Sam Pinkleton has assembled “a room of winners”.

“They remind me so much of what I loved about the original cast on Broadway. There's a level of commitment and honesty in the face of these absurd circumstances that makes me fall in love with each of them as characters, but also as actors,” they say. “Their level of attack and commitment to the writing is like a magic skill that's really hard to come by, especially in something that's this stylised. Each one of them is so ferocious, fearless, and courageous in the way that they're willing to make complete fools of themselves.” Park also praises how game they have been about creating TikToks for the show’s social media accounts. “I’m fairly certain none of them have been on TikTok [before this],” they laugh.

Park has carved out an incredible career for herself, discovering and shaping roles for non-binary performers both on stage and screen. She believes that theatre is currently doing more than TV and film to create opportunities for trans and non-binary artists, but her answer for this frequently changes because “the world is dramatically shifting”.

“Five years ago, film and television was in this moment of queer commodification, where they were seeing the kind of dollar signs around rainbow capitalism. I was lucky to be in three massive, high-profile television shows as lead roles back to back. There were more auditions,” they say, adding that the recent political situation in the US has perhaps contributed to slowed progress for queer stories on screen.

“I don't necessarily think that theatre has to play by those rules,” they continue, “and more and more trans performers and non-binary performers are playing lead roles than they were. That’s why I'm having this love affair with theatre.”

As for the success of a show that has been created and performed by a non-binary creative, Park says, “it feels like what theatre was meant to be. It’s meant to be this silly, amazing experience that everyone gets a chance to step into.”

Sitting in the audience of the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway earlier this year, Park was blown away by Escola’s writing. They are adamant that Oh, Mary! is “one of the funniest plays I’ve ever, ever read. There was a laugh every other second, and I felt like all of the air was sucked out of my body during the show. I was buzzing afterwards — it's something I've never seen before.” It’s time for audiences to prepare for a chaotic new administration in the West End.

Book Oh, Mary! tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

This article first appeared in the December 2025 issue of London Theatre Magazine.

Photo credit: Mason Alexander Park. (Studio photography by Matt Crockett). Inset: Park with Dino Dino Fetscher, Giles Terera, and Kate O'Donnell. (Rehearsal imagery by Manuel Harlan).

Styling by Brittany Taylor, make-up by Caz Walters.