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“She never made this cake,” Cole Escola informed me, vigorously beating the egg whites while I sifted the flour. It was early June and we were cooking at Joe’s Pub, the downtown entertainment venue, where the chefs watched our efforts with growing concern. The cake was a white almond cake and “she” was Mary Todd Lincoln, who Escola played as an unhinged diva with a drinking challenge in “Oh, Mary!” ”, their first self-written album on Broadway. Escola boasts of not having carried out any study for the work, which has just been inaugurated, with universal success, at the Liceo. However, they still saw that they had compatibility to check out my recipe. “I feel like it’s whatever they did for the First Ladies,” Escola said, faking the molasses voice of a tour guide. “’It’s a cake she made. It was her favorite curtain. They spanked me harder as I protested because Mary Todd was known for making the cake and, furthermore, she had discovered the recipe on the National Park Service website. Would they lie? “Absolutely,” Escola responded. “I’ve been chasing them for decades. “
Escola, dressed in a two-tone polo shirt and red leather boots, seemed comfortable in the crowded space, weaving among the kitchen staff with a grace learned during her stint at a vegan bakery. (They liked frosted cupcakes, but hated handling the cash register: “It was more degrading to fake that tenderness than to engage in sex work. ”) At thirty-seven years old, they are slim but striking, with gigantic blue eyes. powdered hair, a pronounced dimple on his chin, and a silver Caesar cut that frames his cherubic features. His sincere good looks had an odd touch (sharp canines, a remote expression) that played into desirable representations of deranged innocence. Many know Escola as the youngster from “Search Party,” a natural-born scion of a fortune who idolizes and then kidnaps the show’s femme fatale (Alia Shawkat), in a riff on Stephen King’s “Misery. ” Others are enthusiastic about her cabaret routines and comedy sketches, performed in drag, that put a surreal spin on morning shows, mom-oriented marketing and other risk-free genres. But her long-standing fame reached a boiling point with “Oh, Mary! Array,” which transformed Escola from a cult icon in global queer comedy to Broadway’s It They.
“At first it’s just you and the other queers,” they said of the show, which opened in January, off-Broadway, at the Lucille Lortel. Then come straight couples and Hollywood celebrities, such as Pedro Pascal, Steven Spielberg and Sally Field, who plays Mary Todd in Spielberg’s “Lincoln. ” Shortly after, Escola teased a suit at evening shows and attended the Met Gala in a white Thom Browne suit accessorized with a dachshund-shaped purse. The demands of new fame have been relentless and Escola has painted some of her paintings to stay ahead. “It’s cold!” they exclaimed as we prepared to combine two sticks of butter in the combiner. “You’re setting me up for failure. You’re doing it on purpose: it’s sabotage.
I felt a bit like Louise, the unfortunate couple whom Mary torments in Escola’s work, threatening to stab her in the eye one day during an embroidery class. “Oh, Mary!” revolves around the First Lady’s efforts to revive her career as a “niche cabaret legend,” despite her husband’s efforts (described as a bitter and exciting case in a closet via Conrad Ricamora) to limit his theatrical activities to the White House. . “ What would it look like if the First Lady of the United States walked on one level right now in the ruins of war!”Abraham pleads in an exchange. ” What would that look look like?!” Mary, throwing herself into the audience, replies, “Sensational!
On stage, dressed in a taffeta skirt and wig with “spoiled” curls, Mary d’Escola is the embodiment of a tantrum, clinging to her ruffles and ruffles as she terrorizes the Oval Office. The First Lady collapses at each and every opportunity. whether it’s opening a workplace in search of whiskey or reading Shakespeare with the cadence of an “excited snake. “Surprisingly, for a work on the presidency scheduled to close in November, “O Mary!he scoffs at questions of history and (When Abe complains about being hated in the South, Mary exclaims, “South of what?This is less an elusive than a naughty bet; in Escola’s anti-“Hamilton” book, libertine jokes circulate without the safety net of “serious” themes. ” I’m the dumbest user here, and I say that as an insult to all of you,” Escola said when accepting a Drama Desk award. To them, “stupid” is an artistic term, a killer comedy that I don’t want an alibi.
“Oh, Mary!”Array,” directed by Sam Pinkleton, grossed more than $1 million in its first full week, breaking the Lyceum’s all-time box office record; Escola celebrated its premiere by inviting the public to a leather bar. The exhibition is not only a test of her comic genius but also a defense of her sensitivity. They are classified as part of a wave of new queer comedy, along with the likes of Bowen Yang, John Early and Ayo Edebiri. But Escola’s rigorous strangeness is singular, combining “low” humor with the stylized precision of a pre-Code Hollywood star. His paintings renounce relativity to revel in illusion, with all its abjection and pathos, especially theirs. “Her reverence of him is my reverence,” Escola said of his First Lady. “His preference for doing cabaret is that I need to do the play about Mary Todd Lincoln. “
As the oven preheated, Escola and I walked down the hallway to the function room, where a dozen tables and booths were clustered around a small quarter circle of stage. “This is my favorite seat,” they said as they led me to a place a partition at the other end. “It’s like watching TV. ” Joe’s Pub, an annex of the Public Theatre, is where Escola honed his craft in the early 2000s. Like Mary, they were cabaret singers, in a downtown scene that featured artists as unconventional as Murray Hill, Tonya Pinkins, and Bridget Everett. who once wrote a role for Escola as a fetus making a song. “I was looking up other people’s numbers and I thought, ‘Oh, damn, he really killed,'” they recalled. “I need to kill like this. “
Escola struggled for years to locate its position in the entertainment world. Born in the small market town of Clatskanie, Oregon, they began acting almost immediately, appearing at the age of 11 in a production of “The Grapes of Wrath. “The local newspaper put Escola on the front page (the headline: “My Broadway Greetings”), even though the cute quotes belie the hardships of her childhood. At the time, Escola slept clandestinely in his grandmother’s retirement home, because she was in the same city. such as shooting; Their mother did not have the means to take them to rehearsals. (“The actress who played Rose de Sharon gave me lunch and dinner every day,” they recall. )Several years earlier, Escola’s father, a Viet Nam veteran who suffered from alcoholism and hallucinations induced by post-traumatic stress disorder, had forced them and their mother out of the family caravan with a rifle.
“My mom, my father and television, my mom,” Escola said. Weaned from comedies like “Keeping Up Appearances,” they developed an ambitious affinity for “the humor of wealthy white women. “They were also deeply attached to their grandmother, who cooked. , sewed, knitted placemats and bought Barbies from them without worrying about whether the dolls were appropriate for their gender or not. Escola followed nonbinary pronouns two years ago, but his homosexuality was transparent from the start. “I would pray to God to make me bisexual,” Escola recalls. “I’m willing to make a deal. ” (“Oh, Mary!” offers this experience to Abraham Lincoln. )They came out as teenagers, helped direct through a lesbian cousin and a video store clerk who led them to “The Rocky Horror Picture Show. “
After graduating from top school, an opportunity they seized performing in their first cabaret regimen, Escola moved to New York City and studied acting at Marymount Manhattan College. But the emphasis on naturalism only taught them that drama schools would not be worth the loans. “I’ve linked ‘theater’ to pretending I’m straight,” they told me. Escola dropped out of school and worked odd jobs as a typist, children’s party host, and bookseller in Manhattan. “There were nights when I would walk from ‘Scholastic Bookstore to my home in Bushwick to save two dollars, regardless of the price of the subway at the time,'” I was told. It was miserable. “
Dan Fishback, a singer-songwriter and playwright whom Escola briefly dated, described Escola as “a very quiet alien,” prone to sudden artistic outbursts. He encouraged them to share his “secret genius” after watching a video of his first original character, Joyce Conner, emerging from an era of suicidal musings. A friend from their formative years had sent Escola a faux fur coat and jewel-toned jumpsuit, leading them to believe they were a dispirited old lady living on the Upper East Side: “What if there was a woman who planned her suicide as if it were something like that?”Is this a brunch she kept putting off? Fishback invited Conner to start anti-folk MC shows, where his antics were a hit with a largely heterosexual crowd.
One day, Joyce did not appear because Escola had been attacked; One guy pointed a gun at their heads, while another kicked them in the teeth. They returned to Oregon to recover, taking a three-day bus ride because they couldn’t afford their plane tickets. “I lay on the couch for three months,” Escola told me. “I drank two liters of Diet Coke every day and I don’t forget to watch ‘Dancing with the Stars’. It was the season Jane Seymour was on and her mother died and she did a beautiful foxtrot. ” “That really helped me. ” This frenzy eventually proved formative for Escola’s comedy, however, at the time, a writing and performing career still seemed out of reach for her. “The plan was for me to apply to a network university,” they told me. “I didn’t realize that. ” “I was traumatized. “
Escola slipped the cake pan into a multi-level commercial oven, which we operated with the help of the staff at Joe’s Pub. (Our plan to cook in her Cobble Hill apartment, a den of porcelain dolls and old Hollywood memorabilia that an Apartment Therapy window described as granny chic, had been thwarted by ants. )based solely on your enjoyment of the “Barefoot Contessa” exhibit. But the tuition made them realize that it might be less difficult for a prostitute to sell them. They contacted Jeffery Self, an acquaintance who did sex pictures on Craigslist, and returned to New York. The two began sharing summaries and participating in comedies, starting with a parody video called “Sweatin’ to Sondheim!” »
Their YouTube sketches, which they also performed at Joe’s Pub, resulted in “Jeffery
Escola has found her way into television, winning enthusiasts for her petulance encouraged in supporting roles in “Difficult People” and “At Home with Amy Sedaris,” in addition to “Search Party. “However, even television is starting to feel cramped. “”Every time I act in something filmed, the grade I get is ‘A little less,'” Escola told me. “Which you don’t have to do at level when you’ve written it and it’s intended to be big. “vanity of “O Mary!” It came to them fifteen years ago, but they postponed its writing until the pandemic, for fear that the idea would be ruined by making it a reality.
The show’s unconditional good luck was a dream come true, but also a reason for “queer hypervigilance,” Escola told me. “I think that means I’m about to get out. “During the encore of “Oh, Mary! » On opening night at the Lyceum, they jokingly announced that the exhibition was already ending; Last week on “The View” they mocked their lush filth by saying they “wanted to write anything for families to enjoy. “Escola was briefly tempted to tone down the play before moving it to Broadway, but a memoir by playwright and drag queen Charles Busch bolstered his morale. “When ‘Vampire Lesbians of Sodom’ went from being a bar show to Off Broadway, he stayed up for a few days saying, ‘We want to reinforce this and make it more like theater,'” they stated. Me; In the end, Busch made the decision to accept the series as it was, and Escola followed suit.
In reality, they still do not accept their new celebrity as truth. “When I’m in those positions, I feel like a shoe that someone left in the theater,” Escola said of occasions like the Met Gala, referring to an after-party. Assembly with Italian director Luca Guadagnino. ” I said to myself, ‘Do you come here often?’And he answers: ‘No. ‘” They imitated Guadagnino’s gaze. Oh,” Escola remembers thinking. “I don’t think we’re going to vibrate. ” (Busy watching old Turner movies, they haven’t noticed either “Challengers” or “Call Me Through Your Name. “), ironically, brought Escola even closer to his Mary Todd Lincoln, whose concern that a disdainful world might keep her off-level gives the show an unforeseen pathos. “My pessimistic aspect is, ‘Well, this will pass soon, and then ‘Nothing intelligent will take a stand again,'” I was told. But I have to accept it.
‘Have you ever had a smart day?'” asks Mary toward the end of “Oh, Mary!”The kind of wonderful day that imbues each and every unhappy, boring, or terrible day that preceded it with deep meaning, because from where did you stand on that wonderful day, all the days that led secretly to this one?”The monologue, delivered between jokes and falls, with unexpected emotion, is a meditation on the risks of filmmaking, which can also be the starting point. of vulnerability. ” You have to go down the hill and walk into tomorrow and it becomes so transparent that the unhappy days, the boring, terrible days secretly go nowhere,” Mary continues. “I can’t have more wonderful days. When the clever timers ran out, I took a break.
In February, a month after “Oh, Mary!”premiered in Lucille Lortel, Escola learned that her younger brother, Kyle, had died in Oregon. “I found out on a Monday, then on Tuesday I was on the program,” they told me. It was around this time that Spielberg and the actors of “Lincoln” arrived. “People keep asking about them in interviews, and they’re like, ‘How was that?And I have nothing to say, because that day I paid for my brother’s cremation. They did. ” I didn’t tell anyone at the casting and speculated when we spoke that the top brass weren’t aware of it: “I knew that if someone asked me about it or looked at me badly, I’d just fall apart. Escola began to cry, burying herself with her face in her hands for a few moments before regaining her composure. Kyle, who was a specialist in places to eat, had aspired to be a visual artist, I was told. “For some explanation as to why I went out and did it, but he didn’t. “
This loss led Escola to think about his own future. After “Oh, Mary!”, they plan to take a step back from functionality to focus on writing, starting with a sitcom, which is already underway, and then other plays. But to the fullest In most cases, they are looking towards a break, a chance to catch up on their memories of old Hollywood and expand their collection of iconic outfits that once belonged to divas. (“I’m carefully dressed in Elizabeth Taylor’s ink-stained blouse,” they told me. ) When I asked them what career they envied most, the answer was Tallulah Bankhead. “She liked others very much and in many ways sabotaged her career. ” own career, because he didn’t do anything that I didn’t need to do. “When “Oh, Maria!” It’s over, they told me: “I hope I can return to the homosexual shadows and play only for them. “
The cake was finished around two in the afternoon. She suffered a lot of fear, but after a few hard hits, she finally fell out of the pan and moved to the side as her sticky innards separated from the glued crust. “Perfect,” Escola cooed. Perfect! Ah, that’s perfect. At least my Mary Todd edition, that’s what it would be like. We tore off pieces of the mess and put them in our mouths, listening to a member of the kitchen staff explain that we deserve to have chilled it in the refrigerator beforehand. Escola showed up to take me to One World Trade Center, where they were recording a podcast for Vogue and I had planned to inflict our pie on the New Yorker. My colleagues devoured it temporarily, praising its taste despite apprehensions about its flavor. “I couldn’t help but text Escola to tell him the good news. ‘I’m sad because everyone liked the cake,’ they replied. ‘That means you’re working in a liar’s office. ‘” ♦
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