Today is Friday, December 19, 2025. As I indicated yesterday, I was out last night first having a late lunch/early dinner with Elliot at Peter Luger’s, in Williamsburg, and then rushing to the Lyceum Theatre where I saw Oh, Mary! for the very first time. All of the reviews deem it a rip-snorting, 80-minute compendium of sight gags, puns, and irreverence, and boy, does it deliver.

Originally conceived by nonbinary writer Cole Escola and starring him in its initial run in 2024, the play farcically examines the life of our 16th president’s First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, and her not-so-well adjustment to life in the White House with her husband, Abraham. At this performance, Mary is assayed by well-known comedy actress Jane Krakowski and her husband is portrayed by John-Andrew Morrison, a man of color.

The other person of note in the cast is Cheyenne Jackson who plays Mary’s acting coach, John Wilkes Booth. Get the snide revision of history here. Abraham Lincoln is covertly gay in Escola’s imagination and he is actively having an affair with the actor who will subsequently assassinate him at Ford’s Theatre, on April 14, 1865. But in Escola’s wild imagination, it’s not Booth who shoots him, but someone else, whom I won’t say here.

The night belongs to Krakowski who cavorts, screams, and plots against her husband and staid Washington society. She lets everyone know that she is bored with life in Washington and wants to pursue a career in cabaret, which her husband is intent on preventing her from doing so.

The 80 minutes or so fly by very quickly, as character after character struts on the stage and engages in the campiest exhibition of farce there is. Mary is shown to be an raging alcoholic always trying to hide some of her hootch. In one extended loop, she addresses a portrait of George Washington as “Mother.” Encouraged to try oil painting, she guzzles a bucket of paint thinner, throws it up, and drinks it down again.

Anyone who thinks he or she will be getting a true history lesson from watching this comical take on events leading up to the assassination of our 16th president would be better advised to read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s account of Lincoln in Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln or any other historian’s account of our Civil War president.

But if you don’t mind mindless irreverence for 80 minutes or so, hightail it to the Lyceum Theatre for Oh, Mary! You won’t be disappointed.

In the meantime, back to reality in the form of our madman president who delivered one of the worst speeches of his horrible political career on Wednesday. In an online HuffPost article on the speech, MS Now host Lawrence O’Donnell delivered a blistering assessment of the Orange Turd’s address in “Lawrence O’Donnell Says Trump Was ‘Angry’ At 1 Irrefutable Thing in Address To Nation,” by Marco Margaritoff.

O’Donnell dubbed this president the “worst public speaker” in America and fact-checked his White House address on the economy from earlier in the evening. He said, “America’s worst public speaker struggled mightily reading a teleprompter full of lies tonight.” Then he went on to debunk every comment made by the lying dotard in the White House. One of those claims was that “inflation was the worst in the history of our country.” O’Donnell called it a lie, saying that “inflation was at 3% when Donald Trump took office. Inflation is at 3% right now.”

O’Donnell further debunked claims that he was “elected in a landslide.” Actually, he won the popular vote – if he even did so – by 1.5 percentage points. He claimed his tariffs aren’t being footed by the American taxpayer (of course, they are). He also debunked the claim that Democrats are demanding costlier health insurance. This is also not true.

The “Last Word” host went on to note that Grump delivered his speech “in a monotone anger” and argued that he shouted the Oval Office address because he still hasn’t “learned how microphones work” – before concluding, “He seemed to be angry at the truth.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) offered his assessment of this terrible speech as well, saying, “It was an unhinged speech that was of course untethered from reality and truth.” He continued, “Donald Trump has made things worse for the American people. He refuses to acknowledge that the tariffs that he is solely responsible for have actually increased costs on everyday Americans by thousands of dollars per year.”

Jeffries castigated the clueless president for breaking his promise on Day 1 to make prices more affordable. He said, “And life isn’t getting more affordable in the United States of America. It’s getting more expensive. And that is the problem that Donald Trump refuses to confront.”

Oh, and this windbag spent most of the cringeworthy address blaming his predecessor for things he deserves all the credit for. What a total moron! Let’s hope Americans are not fooled by this charlatan any more and will do the right thing in November 2026.

Have a nice weekend.

And so it went!

Here is the playbill from this wildly funny show.