5 min.
Cole Escola Is a Star Reborn
THE COMEDIAN COLE ESCOLA HAS always had an affinity for character actors. When Escola, who uses they/them pronouns, first saw The Wizard of Oz as a kid, they found themself transfixed by Billie Burke’s slyly wisecracking Glinda the Good Witch, not Judy Garland’s wide-eyed Dorothy.
“Whoever got the laughs, to me, was the winner of the movie,” Escola says. “The romantic ingénue could be onscreen for the whole movie and giving the performance of her life, but if she doesn’t get any laughs, then I was like, ‘You lost.’”
By that standard, Escola comes out a winner in their Broadway play, Oh, Mary!, an impossibly hilarious dark comedy very loosely based on Mary Todd Lincoln’s life, which manages somehow to tip its hat to both Barry Manilow and Belle and Sebastian. Escola,…
