Posted: 2/3/26 at 11:23pm
The other Oh, Mary reviews thread has mysteriously disappeared into the ether, so I’ll start a new one with JCM and Simu’s first night.
To make a long story short, JCM is, as expected, is absolutely phenomenal, and it starts immediately from the jump. They stormed through the doors and went into a front somersault to the lip of the stage like Willy Wonka on meth. From that point, I was already won over. They spent the entire show playing with voices, expressions, and would vacillate from Shakespearean performance, to Dynasty melodrama, to being an absolute demon. It reminded me a LOT of Jinkx’s first show where she came out swinging and everyone had to hold on for dear life; the difference here being that most of the cast is already firmly grounded. As the cultural ancestor of Cole and Mason’s style of subversive queer comedy, JCM fits like a glove. I thought to myself during the show that I feel like this is easily something they could’ve wrote 20 years ago had the idea germinated then.
Simu held his own with JCM and the rest of the cast. He has more of the adorable “aw, shucks” vibe that JCM’s Mary just absolutely makes hay with. He is by no means bad - his scene with JAM at the bar where he goes full queer was actually pretty hilarious and he added a new character gesture in that scene that I won’t spoil, but made me cackle.With time, he will be perfectly fine, but as of right now, this is John Cameron Mitchell’s Mary-verse of Madness and ya just gotta strap in and hold on to your butts
