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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. The Broadway comedy O'Mary is nominated for five Tony Awards,

including Best Play and Best Leading Actor in a Play. The comedy follows a very fictionalized,

intentionally improbable version of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in the time leading to her husband's assassination.

Our guest today, Coles Scola, wrote the play and stars as Mary. Eskola uses they-them pronouns.

They spoke with fresh airs and Marie Boldenado. The New York Times calls the play,

Oh Mary, unhinged, so campy, and so unexpected. They've also called it one of the best comedies in years. Those looking for a close to historically accurate version of Mary Todd Lincoln should definitely look elsewhere, because this play is a reimagining based on very few facts.

Here the First Lady is depressed, sad, beside herself, and constantly drinking, not because of the

civil war or even the deaths of her children. She longs for her only true love, Cabaret,

and her husband, the president, will try anything to

stop her.

Just another ploy to keep me from drinking and tucked away in the drawing room where no one can

see me.

Contrary to what your paranoia tells you, I'm not some evil mastermind conspiring to keep you miserable.

When you keep me off the stage, you make the whole world miserable.

God for God's sake, Mary, how would it look for the first lady of the United States

to be flitting about the stage right now in the ruins of war.

How would it look sensational?

That's Tony nominee Colisgola as Mary and Tony nominee Conrad Rickamora as Abraham Lincoln.

Colesgola first received rave reviews for O'Mary when it premiered

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