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The Mary-go-round continues! Last month, stage and screen spitfire Betty Gilpin (GLOW) took over the central role of Mary Todd Lincoln in Cole Escola's wildly ahistorical farce, Oh, Mary!—the smash hit of the Broadway season—from Escola themself, who had been playing it for nearly a year. And it was announced today that, after Gilpin departs the production on March 16, a new actor will don Mary's black hoop skirt and bratty curls: the stage and TV star and 2019 Time Out cover boy Tituss Burgess.
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The catch: Burgess will only play the role for three weeks, from March 18 through April 6. His successor in April has not yet been announced, though it is widely assumed on the rialto that Escola will return to the production in time for Tony Awards season.
Burgess is best known for his bravura turn on Netflix's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt as Kimmy's roommate Titus Andromedon, an irrepressibly self-centered and fame-craving nonworking actor. That role should prepare him perfectly to play Escola's version of Mary Todd Lincoln as a raging termagant. (As we wrote in our five-star review: "Boozy, vicious and miserable, the unstable and outrageously contrary Mary is oblivious to the Civil War and hell-bent on achieving stardom as—what else?—a cabaret singer.")
Before he played that other Titus, though, Burgess was already much admired for his high-flying vocal turns on Broadway as Sebastian the Crab in The Little Mermaid and gambler Nicely-Nicely Johnson in the 2009 revival of Guys and Dolls. "I definitely want to come back to Broadway," he told Time Out in 2016, mentioning The Kiss of the Spider Woman's Molina as a part he would love to play. While that has yet to happen, Burgess did return briefly to the boards in 2023 as Ziegler in Moulin Rouge! His upcoming stint in Oh, Mary!, though, will be his first time in a straight play on Broadway—albeit a straight play with a decidedly queer comedic sensibility (and a generous dollop of music).
Burgess was one of the two actors that Escola floated as dream replacements when Variety asked him about possible future Marys last summer. The other was Pedro Pascal, who has yet to play the role.
Tickets for Oh, Mary!—whether before, during or after Burgess's time in the show—are currently for sale. You can buy them here.
