Cole Escola’s OH, MARY! completes its theatrical grand slam — HBO streams it in 2027

There is a structural idea behind OH, MARY! that makes it resistant to easy description. Cole Escola’s dark comedy about a miserable, suppressed Mary Todd Lincoln — set in the weeks before Abraham Lincoln’s assassination — runs 80 uninterrupted minutes, refuses the usual dramatic sprawl, and drives everything through what director Sam Pinkleton calls “meticulously choreographed chaos.” That formal compression is the show’s argument: the premise is absurd, the grief underneath it is not, and Escola holds both in suspension for the full hour and twenty minutes. It is also, it turns out, precisely what made HBO want to capture it.

HBO has confirmed the play will debut on the network and be available to stream on HBO Max in 2027. The release is the filmed record of a single West End performance — captured at London’s Trafalgar Theatre with the original cast, directed for both stage and screen by Tony Award winner Sam Pinkleton. Rather than adapting the material for a new production, the network has kept its structure intact: all five original cast members reprising their roles, the same 80-minute one-act form. Nina Rosenstein, HBO’s Executive Vice President of Programming, described the show in the announcement as “so wildly original that everyone who sees it immediately needs someone else to see it too.”

Lyceum Theatre facade on Broadway in Midtown Manhattan — Lyceum Theatre, Broadway, where OH, MARY! broke box office records. Photo: Ajay Suresh / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0

Escola stars as Mary Todd Lincoln — the role that earned them the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play, making them the first non-binary winner in that category. Alongside them: Olivier Award winner Giles Terera as Mary’s Husband, Bianca Leigh as Mary’s Chaperone, Tony Macht as Mary’s Husband’s Assistant, and Emmy nominee Michael Urie as Mary’s Teacher. Pinkleton, who received the Tony for Best Direction of a Play for the Broadway production, directs the filmed version — a choice that treats the camera as an extension of the stage rather than a replacement for it.

The show’s trajectory has been unusual by any standard. It opened Off Broadway in January 2024, then transferred to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, where it became the first production in the venue’s 121-year history to gross more than one million dollars in a single week — a record it has since broken fifteen times. It was also the first show of the 2024-25 Broadway season to recoup its full investment. A West End premiere followed in December 2025, and the Olivier committee added its own recognition. A North American tour is now underway.

OH, MARY! has made a practice of demanding to be shared. Escola’s note to the HBO audience frames the release in characteristically oblique terms: “I’m so happy to share this show with a wider audience and spread OH, MARY! awareness. Knowing about OH, MARY! is the first step in getting rid of it.” The 2027 HBO Max premiere will extend that chain into considerably more living rooms. The Trafalgar capture doesn’t adapt OH, MARY! so much as extend it — one more room, vastly larger.

Tags: hbo max, Cole Escola, Giles Terera, Michael Urie, OH, MARY!, Sam Pinkleton