‘Oh, Mary!’ stars praise San Francisco drag legacy

Welcome to the historic Heron Theatre here in San Francisco. How does it feel to be, first of all, opening in San Francisco and to be opening in this theater? It feels right. It feels really good. I mean, this is a historic theater, but also just like San Francisco is so like, I feel like matches the vibe of this show really well. So I'm really looking forward to doing the show here. I was actually going to ask, San Francisco has a long history of drag, of alternative performance. Do you feel like San Francisco's ethos is at all similar to the downtown cabaret alternative performance ethos that birthed the show? totally i mean i think you know i've been saying from the beginning with Omarias Cole like people have been making plays like this for decades like we're not the first people to like have someone in a big dress making a mockery of something that is usually taken seriously and that tradition is downtown but that's yeah i mean we're in san francisco we're in the home of the Cockettes and the Mime Troupe and like the greatest circus in the world and like i i i I think part of why all of us actually keep coming back to working in San Francisco and making things in San Francisco is there is this incredible alignment with queer performance and downtown performance and alternative performance. And it's also just fun as hell, you know? All three of you have such strong, have history with San Francisco. Does this feel at all like a homecoming doing this show in particular here? Yeah. Like, this city is what made me want to do drag. so getting to come and do this here it's kind of amazing yeah i've made my favorite things the things i'm the most proud of i've made here and also the first time i ever saw alaska perform was at the castro oh my god uh so what show i saw you do showgirls do peaches oh right yes yes um you were Nomi Malone a lot and uh that's why you're here today and and also i just love the current like it's the it's the greatest theater in america in terms of just like beauty and sightlines, yeah it's a wonderful wonderful city and the audiences here are fantastic they're game they're ready to play since you're all three returning champions to san francisco do you have favorite places favorite haunts things you do on your off days here i have to get to Oasis i want to see the scream show that they're doing i have to yeah i do this is definitely the city more than anywhere else where i like prioritize going to see drag and also going to gay bars like i just love going to like the Eagle and i love i love like long bike rides in this town i love going to the foggy ass beach i was just about to say dolores park but that's so kind of boring compared to, like, the beautiful eagle in San Francisco. The historic eagle. In our historic much. Alaskan, you talked about this part as a dream role for you. Can you tell me about when you first saw the play and knew that you wanted to tackle this role? Well, I saw the play when it first went to Broadway, and I was like, I had heard a lot about it, and a lot of people were like, oh, this play is really good, you have to see it. And I was sort of like, how good can a play be? What's so good about it? And then I went and saw it. And I was like, it's so good. This play is so good. You have to see it. But I didn't walk away like, I want to play that role. I was like, there's no way that anyone can do that role like that. And so it wasn't until a long time later that I was like, if i got to choose like a dream role i would choose that and how did you find your Mary for this production there's been so many you know where did yours come from did you so i don't famously said they did no research yeah i know research as well yes i i went in very like i'm not giving it like an angle or or anything i just wanted to like do do the play and do the the work uh that that was written by Cole but she Mary Todd Lincoln was from Kentucky so i'm so mad i didn't do it with a southern accent so it was close i know i like so mad it's not too late i could have been Blanche Devereaux this whole time and it would have been accurate kind of she probably had a southern accent john andrew how is your relationship with the role of Mary's husband evolved I initially put the part on Broadway are you in it have you found different things in this character this stage yeah it's it's weird to kind of like hear it anew you know I've had a little bit of a break from doing it it's been like a four month break or something and it is wonderful to kind of like hear it and you hear it in Alaska's voice and so there are different things that I'm hearing or different things that are kind of like coming out at me just in terms of like the wonderful choices that Alaska makes and um uh i guess the the the real relationship with it for me as a performer is just always being able to be as nimble as i can be to be present for whoever is um my mary yeah um talk to me about balancing the enormous human emotions and the enormous frantic very physical comedy of the play feels like if the balance of those two things is off even just a little bit this could be a disaster i think all of the comedy comes from the stakes and the emotions you know we always say in rehearsal like the audience thinks they're watching a comedy but the characters are in a drama yeah and they have to be in a drama and they have to believe that they're in a drama and every moment is played dead seriously and you know kind of like a great sitcom the comedy comes out of a real context and real problems and real emergencies um so at no point in the making of it were we like you don't want to be funny like it would be wacky if we did this big physical bit but um you know there's like i'm thinking i don't want to give anything away but like there's a moment where like mary finds herself in like a physical predicament and has to solve that problem and the way she solves that problem is really funny to watch but she's trying to solve the problem actually happens a few times you know for me it's like the show starts those doors open and we are we're we're on the ride and as long as we're like really locked in and just taking care of one another and it kind of happens you know we're kind of on the train with one another you know sometimes one of us will kind of like fall off and it's amazing how we take care of each other, Sam, is this all like directing a musical because of the um the exertions, the pace, the idea of keeping a certain tempo, is that have you found anything in common? It is a musical, it is a musical, I mean it was it's a play that was made by gay people, you know like with love, like I've never seen a long play that I enjoy um and so but like I love singing and dancing and there's a um I don't want to say that there's a math to it but the it's the play was very meticulously written, I would say like we think there's no fact as they say so let's talk about the fan culture around the show first of all is there an official name for the O'Mary fans? Oh is there had the head big heads um there were red heads, the Mary heads or I haven't heard of any, I don't know, that's I think they're just can that be their official name? I've never thought about, I don't know what the name would be I haven't heard of it, oh Mary I'm showing up the costumes, the costumes are almost characters themselves for both of you uh talk to me about inhabiting the bodies through inhabiting a couple of those iconic wardrobe pieces that are so associated the second I was allowed to put on the hoop skirt which I think was day one of rehearsal uh maybe day two I I wanted to put it on I had to because it does like so affect like how you move around like try putting on a hoop skirt just for fun and it changes your indeed make you feel bratty oh yeah I feel like that that's my version of like the you know the the 90 inch like top knot ponytail like this is it's it John Andrew how about you how does your costume help you find your way to marry yourself oh my god the top hat it's like donning the top hat is madness and lunacy and wonderful um and it throws me back into um kind of like a a different time period uh you know vocally i i think i'm doing something that is a different kind of formality um that is a throwback and it's like immediately put the top hat on and my voice changes you know what i mean like there's just like a um yeah snap right into it does it change your center of gravity the top hat or the hoop skirt yes it changes everything and it's like actually iconic like i think everything everyone calls everything iconic but like like the top hat is actually yeah yeah everyone has a reference point of that so it's really cool also it's the beard for me you know what i mean like i put that on i put that piece on and it's like oh yeah i'm it's not my face anymore you know yeah can we expect more casting that breaks out of that binary will we see more stupidity on the Broadway stage i hope we see more stupidity on the Broadway stage it doesn't need to take itself so seriously and i think the the joyous thing about what you all have created created is it's very specific and as you said it's not watered down and um you know sometimes especially commercial theater we're trying to make stuff for everyone but if you make something specific um i think people will find themselves in it so i think so i mean i i love that this show is a success because it deserves to be one and so i i hope that it does open doors in that way yeah i'm not i'm never good at saying like what it all means but like what i can say is like it's just really fun to cast the show it continues to be really fun it continues to be really fun to look at something and be like this is a way to think about it completely differently and i just don't know why we wouldn't do that more because it is more fun and frankly it like invites people into the theater both on stage and in the audience who might not usually see themselves in the theater who might not usually come to a play on a tuesday night and i think in the war against the robots it's all of our jobs to like make an argument for theater as a threatened art form and i think one of the ways that we do that is by just really keeping people on their toes when we think about who's on stage