Tony and Obie Award-winning actor, writer, and director John Cameron Mitchell will return to Broadway in the smash hit play Oh, Mary! for a limited 12-week engagement this winter, the show’s producers announced today. Best known as the writer and original star of the groundbreaking musical (turned film) Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Mitchell will play ‘Mary Todd Lincoln’ beginning Tuesday, February 3, 2026 through April 26, 2026.
“Cole Escola and Sam Pinkleton are the wild horses that dragged me back to drag and I couldn't be happier!” said Mitchell. “As the most mature Mary yet, my days are filled with working the StairMaster™, mainlining Ozempic® and mastering my Brilliant Dialogue©. ‘Line?!’ Thank you, Cole, may I do you proud mangling your classic!”
“Welcoming John into this cast feels both delicious and somehow inevitable,” added Tony Award-winning director Sam Pinkleton. “So many of us in the Oh, Mary! Universe, myself very much included, wouldn’t be where we are without John’s work, which reshaped what live performance could look and feel like for generations of tender weirdos. He’s a queer trailblazer, cultural icon, brilliant actor — and, most importantly for his new role, a giant idiot.”
Mitchell joins an esteemed company of actors who have donned the role’s bratty curls, including the Tony Award-winning original star and playwright, Cole Escola, along with current ‘Mary’ Jane Krakowski (through January 4, 2026), Tituss Burgess, Betty Gilpin, Hannah Solow, and Jinkx Monsoon, who returns to the show for an encore engagement on January 8, 2026. Solow will play the title role on January 6 and 7.
Directed by 2025 Tony Award winner Pinkleton, Oh, Mary! opened on Broadway on July 11, 2024 at the Lyceum Theatre, where it became the first show in the theater’s 121-year history to gross more than $1,000,000 in a single week. Oh, Mary! has since broken its own box office record twelve times, and became the first show of the 2024-25 Broadway season to recoup its investment.