Learn about the real historical figures behind 'Oh, Mary!' in the West End

Cole Escola's comedy provides an irreverently anachronistic take on Mary Todd Lincoln and her presidential husband.

Summary

• Mary Todd Lincoln was the wife of American Civil War-era president Abraham Lincoln
• The couple had a turbulent relationship and both experienced grief and mental health problems
• The Lincolns were great theatre lovers - which led to Abraham's demise

Oh, Mary! certainly isn’t your typical biographical play. While Abraham Lincoln has been hailed as an American hero and one of the greatest politicians in history, his wife Mary has received far less favourable press. Often dismissed as a hysterical spendthrift, Cole Escola’s comedy depicts her as a passionate woman consumed with lust and fuelled by alcohol and theatrical ambition – in perhaps not the most flattering light, but definitely a memorable one!

The West End production stars Mason Alexander Park (Cabaret) as Mary and Giles Terera (Hamilton) as Mary’s Husband. They ought to tear up the stage as this mismatched couple, who are stuck together for better or for worse – or at least until a fateful trip to the theatre…

Amazingly, there’s a second play about Mary Todd Lincoln called Mrs President by John Ransom Phillips that runs at the Charing Cross Theatre from 28 January to 8 March 2026. Starring Keala Settle (The Greatest Showman), the play focuses on the relationship between Mary and her photographer Mathew Brady. It really is Mary Todd Lincoln season in London – all we need now is a revival of Our American Cousin!. Why not see both to compare and contrast?

Read on to learn about the real-life figures who inspired Oh, Mary! and the turbulent historical period that she lived through.

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

Mary Todd Lincoln

Mary Todd Lincoln was born in Lexington, Kentucky (then known as the “Athens of the West”) in 1818 to banker Robert Smith Todd and his wife Eliza, who died when Mary was six. She completed her education at a finishing school where she learned to speak French fluently, as well as attaining “accomplishments” such as music, dancing, elocution, and etiquette. As a young woman, Mary was deemed popular and vivacious, with a keen interest in politics.

Mary was 20 when she met Abraham Lincoln at a dance in Springfield, Illinois where she was visiting her sister Elizabeth. Abraham, a notoriously bad dancer, informed Mary that he wanted to dance with her "in the worst way." Despite his two left feet, the two were drawn together and, following some familial opposition and a broken engagement, they were married in 1842.

Mary and Abraham had four sons: Robert, Edward (who died shortly before his fourth birthday), William, and Thomas. Abraham became president in 1860 and the American Civil War broke out the following year. Mary was criticised for her spending on refurbishment of the White House and on jewellery, and she was the subject of suspicion as her family was split between supporters of the Union (the federal government) and the Confederacy (the slave-owning Southern states).

Mary suffered from migraines and depression throughout her life and she was frequently verbally and sometimes physically abusive towards her husband. Her mental health further deteriorated following the death of 11-year-old William in 1862. During the war, she visited hospitals and wrote letters on behalf of wounded soldiers but remained generally unpopular with the public. She was with Abraham when he was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre on 14 April 1865.

Further tragedy struck when 18-year-old Thomas died in 1871 and in 1875, Robert, her only surviving child, had her committed to an asylum. She was released the following year and she travelled in Europe before settling with her sister Elizabeth in Springfield. Mary’s final years were marred by health problems and she died of a stroke on 16 July 1882 at the age of 63.

In the play, Mary is anachronistically depicted as a frustrated cabaret star. Cabaret, as in a series of musical turns performed to audiences sitting at tables and partaking in refreshments, didn’t arrive in the US until the early twentieth century. Vaudeville also didn’t emerge until the late nineteenth century. Mary’s style of performance could historically be defined as burlesque, as in the parodying of classical and realist works (burlesque wasn't associated with striptease and nudity until the twentieth century).

Abraham Lincoln

In contrast to Mary’s privileged upbringing, Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room log cabin in rural Kentucky. He had little formal schooling and completed his own legal education through self-study. He was admitted to the Illinois bar and practiced law under John T. Stuart, cousin of his future wife Mary.

In 1834, Lincoln was elected to the Illinois legislature and was re-elected three times. In 1847 he entered the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1849 he returned to his law practice. However, he returned to politics in 1856 due to the issue of slavery.

Lincoln ran for president as a Republican in 1860 and won. However, by the time Lincoln took office in March 1861, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union (the central government), forming the Confederate States of America in order to preserve their slavery-based plantation economies. The Civil War began the following month.

He was a devoted father and was devastated by the deaths of Edward and William, which brought on bouts of “melancholy”.

Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, which declared all enslaved people in Confederate territory to be free. That November, Lincoln made his most famous speech, known as the Gettysburg Address, in which he proclaimed that the nation was "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and vowed to save the United States’ “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Lincoln was elected to a second term in 1864 and the Civil War ended on 9 April 1865. However, a week later, Lincoln was fatally shot. He was 56 at the time of his death. He is remembered as one of the greatest presidents in American history due to the way in which he raised himself out of poverty, his role in the abolition in slavery, and his martyrdom.

Elizabeth Keckley

“Mary’s Chaperone” is a character in the play. Mary’s closest confidante during the White House years was Elizabeth Keckley, who was born into slavery in Virginia in 1818 and was trained as a seamstress, producing clothes that were sold by the family who owned her. She purchased her and her son’s freedom in 1855 and moved to Washington DC in 1860, where she met Mary Todd Lincoln, who appointed her as her personal dressmaker.

Until this point, Mary’s style was frilly and girlish (elaborate sleeves and bright floral prints were very popular at this time). Keckley encouraged her to develop a more elegant, sophisticated look with fewer ruffles and excess decorations. Nevertheless, Mary remained devoted to those bratty ringlets!

She published her autobiography in 1868, which told the story of her life in slavery and journey to becoming an independent businesswoman, and explored her relationship with the Lincolns. While Keckley depicted Abraham in an unfailingly positive light, she was more critical of Mary. Keckley’s later years were spent in poverty and she died in 1907 at the age of 89.

Another significant female relationship in Mary’s life was that with her aforementioned sister Elizabeth – Mary and Abraham were married at Elizabeth’s house and she ultimately died there. Elizabeth also lobbied for Mary’s release when she was institutionalised and cared for her afterwards.

Joshua Fry Speed

Lincoln is depicted as a closeted gay man in the play and his sexuality has been the subject of historical speculation. He and his friend Joshua Fry Speed – on whom the character “Mary’s Husband’s Assistant” could be considered loosely inspired – shared a bed for several years and exchanged some emotionally charged letters. However, bed-sharing wasn’t an unusual practice in the nineteenth century, nor were openly intense friendships between men.

John Wilkes Booth

The first presidential assassin, John Wilkes Booth was born in Maryland in 1838 to the British-born actor Junius Brutus Booth. As a young man, a fortune teller told him that he would have a grand but short life, in which he was fated to die young and "meet a bad end".

As an actor, Booth was known for his handsome appearance and nifty sword fighting skills. He took the Confederate side in the Civil War (his Maryland family was divided, as were Mary Todd Lincoln’s Kentucky siblings). He vowed to kill Lincoln after he made a speech in favour of granting suffrage to formerly enslaved people on 11 April 1865, and he carried out the act three days later. He was eventually captured and shot on a farm in Virginia on 26 April.

Laura Keene and Harry Hawk

The Lincolns were great theatre fans, and farce and melodrama were the most popular genres of the day. The play that was being performed that fateful night at Ford’s Theatre was Our American Cousin, a farce with melodramatic elements by British playwright Tom Taylor about Asa Trenchard, a coarse American who inherits an estate in England. On the night of the assassination, the female lead was played by the British-born Laura Keene, whose portrait Cole Escola wore in a pendant necklace when they received their Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play.

The title role was taken by Harry Hawk, who was alone on stage when the shot was fired. Hawk was a friend of Booth’s brother Edwin – also an actor, who supported the Union.

And how did you enjoy the play, Mrs Lincoln? Well, in the aftermath, Hawk wrote to his parents: “On that night the play was going off so well. Mr and Mrs Lincoln enjoyed it much. She was laughing at my speech when the shot was fired. In fact it was one laugh from the time the curtain went up until it fell – and to think of such a sorrowful ending!”

There’ll be no such sorrow when you see Oh, Mary! – just lots of laughs, and perhaps a bit of catharsis too.

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

Photo credit: Mason Alexander Park in Oh, Mary! (Photo by Manuel Harlan). Inset: rehearsal images for Oh, Mary!. (Photos by Manuel Harlan)