Darren Criss plops into a swivel chair, directly across from “Oh, Mary!” creator Cole Escola, and stashes his phone between the cushions. The former “Glee” star, on Broadway in “Maybe Happy Ending,” has a list of questions on his cell for Escola, and he’s terrified of forgetting any of them.
“I’m going to leave and think, ’What did I not ask Cole?’” says Criss, ever the straight-A student. The duo are sitting down to discuss their experiences headlining this Broadway season’s most blazingly original productions. In a year that’s overflowing with splashy revivals and screen adaptations, audiences have fallen for “Maybe Happy Ending,” a tenderhearted musical about two robots in love, and “Oh, Mary!,” a deranged, comedic look at Abraham Lincoln’s wife.
Emilio Madrid for Variety
Anything original can be risky, but Criss points out the perks: “Nobody is encumbered by expectation or comparison.”
Escola leans back, a devilish glint in their eyes, and interjects, “Well, people who know Mary Todd Lincoln … some of her friends have come to see the show.”
In their playful conversation, Escola and Criss talk about the purposefully silly disregard of facts in “Oh, Mary!” (“No one’s coming in like, “I thought this was historically accurate,” Escola says) and the complexity of portraying an android in the technologically ambitious “Maybe Happy Ending” (“Am I literally doing the robot? How beep-boopy are we doing the movements?” Criss muses).
COLE ESCOLA: How did we meet?
DARREN CRISS: Let me set the scene: About 10 years ago, a mutual friend, Benj Pasek, and I went to see one of your shows at the Duplex.
ESCOLA: I would do a solo sketch show, and I would write a new hour every month to challenge myself.
CRISS: I remember being so taken by it. I have a short list on my phone of people that I want to …
ESCOLA: … kill.
CRISS: Kill. Destroy immediately. No, of people who I am enamored with and want to work with. Your name has been on my little list for a long time, and I asked Benj afterwards, “Would you mind connecting us?” At the time, I was shooting “Glee,” and I don’t know in what world we’d intersect, but part of me wanted to be in your life.
ESCOLA: Well, now we’re a block away from each other. You wrecked me the other night. Not in that way, guys, come on …
CRISS: I wouldn’t flatter myself.
ESCOLA: I went to see a matinee of “Maybe Happy Ending” before I had to do two shows, and I was a crying baby. And then I walked a whole one block up to the Lyceum Theatre.
CRISS: “Oh, Mary!” feels like it was made in a lab for people that subscribe to that kind of humor and aesthetic. And I was like, “I don’t know if it’ll take to Broadway” — not in a pessimistic way, just in an honest-to-God curious way.
Emilio Madrid for Variety
ESCOLA: No, a bit of a pessimistic way. You’ve always had it out for me, Darren. You have that list …
CRISS: Why did you bring the show to Broadway? It was such a massive hit Off Broadway, there had to be a degree of fear.
ESCOLA: We were scared that we were going to get too big for our britches. When the producers asked, I was like, “Why would I say no?”
CRISS: [His phone alarm goes off.] Shit, sorry. If Patti LuPone heard that, I’d be out the fucking window.
ESCOLA: Birth-control alarm?
CRISS: Too late for that — I have two kids under 3.
ESCOLA: Two kids under 3 years old and eight shows a week.
CRISS: If I’m putting the jokes aside, it’s the most beautiful arrangement. Because to have a schedule and be with my children all day is nice.
ESCOLA: It’s nice to not have kids.
CRISS: I hope you’re loving that sleep. I love that for you. You work your fucking ass off.
ESCOLA: So do you. I love the physicality of your show. But I also know when you do the same movement eight times a week over and over again, all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh my God …” [Escola winces] When I was watching, I wondered what hurts you when you wake up.
CRISS: I have to say, the show is the easiest part of my day, as a parent with two under 3.
ESCOLA: Oh, come on. Get out of here.
CRISS: It’s true. The life of little ones is ballistic and uncontrolled; by the time you go to a show that’s under two hours, it’s sweet and measured. I don’t envy our colleagues who are retching their souls out for three hours, eight times a week.
I didn’t write this show though. Because you’re the commander of this ship, do you find Mary changing, like, “I’m going to do this now”?
ESCOLA: No, because we found the best version of the story, so I want to keep that as tight as possible. But I didn’t write it knowing that I would be doing it for this long.
When I talked to Tituss Burgess and Betty Gilpin [both have substituted in, playing Mary on Broadway], Tituss was like, “You have to write in more water breaks. There’s no time in the show to pee.”
Emilio Madrid for Variety
CRISS: Why did you want to do “Oh, Mary!” as a linear play?
ESCOLA: I thought the more serious it looked visually and tonally, the funnier it would be. I wrote it in 2020, but I had the idea in 2009. I was afraid that once I got it on paper, it wouldn’t be as good as what I had in my head.
CRISS: That’s a healthy thing that every artist has.
ESCOLA: To avoid it for 12 years? It’s funny though. My midlife crisis started before this play — early-onset midlife crisis, by the way; I’m far too young for a real midlife crisis — and then during the break from the show, it fully came back. This play has not solved any personal problems for me.
CRISS: There’s just another mountain.
ESCOLA: No, it’s the same mountain. Did you do theater when you were growing up?
CRISS: Yes. I did “Fiddler on the Roof.” Were you in “Fiddler”?
ESCOLA: I was Mendel, the rabbi’s son. My line was “And my cheese, Reb Tevye?”
CRISS: I was Reb Tevye. That was my one leading role. I didn’t have a lot of leading roles.
ESCOLA: I was 15. I would show up to the theater three hours early to do my makeup. The school’s theater teacher, Dana Brown, made a huge impression on me. Everyone was afraid of Dana Brown. He had these weird rules, like if you died in the show, you didn’t bow at curtain call because it was breaking the magic. But it’s informed how I want to protect the audience. It’s like the Wicked Witch of the West …
CRISS: She’s dead.
ESCOLA: … she doesn’t get a bow. Sorry, sweetheart — that’s the price you pay. There have been moments in “Oh, Mary!” where sometimes bits grow or I’m not feeling them. But if you indulge too much, it can take away from the story, which takes away from the gift to the audience. So sometimes I just have to hit the notes.
CRISS: I don’t get to watch my show. But you’ve passed your role to other people. When Betty Gilpin went in, was that the first time you watched the show?
Emilio Madrid for Variety
ESCOLA: Yeah. It was surreal in that it was not surreal at all. I was just like, “What a lovely play.”
In “Maybe Happy Ending,” your movements are echoed in the way the scene changes — and the way the boxes around you glide. Have there been technical mishaps?
CRISS: They happen, and they knock a few years off [director] Michael Arden’s life. He gets upset about those things, but it happens. I heard Steven Spielberg came to your show.
ESCOLA: He came downtown to the Lortel with Tony Kushner and Sally Field. It was so sweet. I was nervous beforehand — because they had done “Lincoln” — that they would be like, “That’s in poor taste.” But they were totally fine.
CRISS: Steven also just came to our show. It’s hard not to be totally starstruck. He’s part of the fabric of entertainment. He showed up, and for two hours of his life, we had his time and attention.
ESCOLA: I heard he was on his phone the whole time. I’m kidding. It reminds me of this clip of Nancy Silverton making this dessert for Julia Child.
CRISS: And she cries? I love that clip.
ESCOLA: Me too. Because I’m like, “Oh, it must feel so good to be Nancy Silverton, making Julia Child cry with how delicious your dessert is?” I get a sliver of that feeling when someone that I admire comes to see “Oh, Mary!” It’s like, “You gave me so much. I want to give a little something back to you.”
Photographed at the Rainbow Room and Top of the Rock at Rockerfeller Center
Escola: Jumpsuit: Vintage from Winning & Losing; Makeup: Sasha Borax/Guerlain; Criss: Stylist: Ashley Weston + Scarlett Weston; Grooming: Edward Cruz and Michael Livsey; Criss, Clothing: Brooks Brothers
