Bowen Yang is heading to Broadway. The Emmy-nominated Saturday Night Live alum will make his Broadway debut as Mary Todd Lincoln in Cole Escola’s Tony-winning comedy Oh, Mary!, beginning performances Tuesday, September 15 at the Lyceum Theatre.
Yang will join continuing cast members Phillip James Brannon (‘Mary’s Husband’), Barrett Foa (‘Mary’s Teacher’), Bianca Leigh (‘Mary’s Chaperone’), and returning original cast member Tony Macht (‘Mary’s Teacher’s Assistant’) at the historic Lyceum Theatre.
Yang was approached about the role once before – last summer, while he was still slated to return to Saturday Night Live for part of the season. He passed.
“I was too yoked to that timeframe to give myself the proper runway,” Yang told Vulture. “I was not going to take a Broadway debut without the utmost seriousness and gravitas and respect.”
Following his final SNL episode in December, Yang returned to the Lyceum for his fifth visit to the show – this time catching understudy Hannah Solow in the role. The performance landed differently.
“It’s a show that is at first about regrets, in the way that I regretted letting this offer go,” Yang said. “Mary feels trapped by her own decisions and then she understands that it is, in fact, other people’s decisions that have sort of kept her in this place.”
Additionally, tickets for the musical are on sale now through Saturday, July 10, 2027, nearly three years after the production’s Opening Night on Broadway. Initially scheduled for a limited run, the play continues at the Lyceum Theatre, alongside an Olivier Award-winning run in London’s West End and an upcoming North American tour launching in Hartford, CT this September.
The Broadway production been led by original creator Cole Escola, Betty Gilpin, John Cameron Mitchell, Jinkx Monsoon, Tituss Burgess, Jane Krakowski, Maya Rudolph, and, most recently, Megan Stalter.
Yang is best known for his eight seasons on Saturday Night Live, where he became the show’s first Chinese American cast member and earned multiple Emmy nominations for his work. His screen credits include Wicked, Fire Island, Bros, and The Afterparty.
Oh, Mary! is written by and originally starred Cole Escola, and is directed by Sam Pinkleton. The comedy imagines the final weeks before Abraham Lincoln’s assassination through the eyes of his wife – here a bitter, blackout-drunk aspiring cabaret star chafing against her marriage and her circumstances.
The production transferred to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre following a sold-out, extended run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. It went on to become one of the biggest comedy hits in recent Broadway memory, earning Escola the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play.
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