Broadway Briefing has named Cole Escola the 2024 Broadway Showperson of the Year. Broadway Showperson of the Year is awarded to "the person or persons who most influenced Broadway this year."
2024 is the year that Cole Escola unveiled “Oh, Mary!,” creating an unmissable performance and a Broadway hit. It’s hard to believe that a year ago today, “Oh, Mary!” had only just announced an Off-Broadway run, with no revealed plans of a Broadway transfer. In fact, the producers have repeatedly stated they had no expectation of moving the show to Broadway. But Escola’s hilarious interpretation of Mary Todd Lincoln found a growing and enthusiastic audience and has served as a reminder that Broadway hits can come in many different forms.
Since opening Off-Broadway in February, and its subsequent Broadway transfer in June, “Oh, Mary!” has dominated a great deal of the theatrical conversation. Written by and starring Escola, the play has broken box-office records at the Lyceum Theatre and broken out of the typical Broadway conversation and into the greater cultural zeitgeist, as evidenced by their interviews on Jimmy Fallon, “The View,” “Watch What Happens” Live, and more. And how about riding that giant flamingo in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?
They were named to the 2024 Time100 Next list; won this year’sSam Norkin Off-Broadway Award from the Drama Desk, the Outer Critic Circle's John Gassner Award for New American Play by a new playwright (as well as tying for Best Actor) a number of Dorian Awards (including LGBTQ Theater Artist of the Season), among other recognitions; walked the carpet of the Met Gala and more. GQ referred to Cole as "The Toast of Broadway,” and, in their "Reason’s to Love New York Right Now” list, New York Magazine proclaimed: “[Number] 23. Because No One’s Doing Better Than Cole Escola.”
For all of these reasons, Cole Escola is Broadway Briefing’s 2024 Broadway Showperson of the Year.
A tribute to Cole Escola, by Bowen Yang
Cole Escola being this season’s Showperson of the Year is an easy choice. Which is not to say that it’s lazy! It’s just simple. It’s uncomplicated. It’s as effortless as Cole is, because among all the circles of which Cole is the tangential Venn-diagram overlap, that’s the consensus: Cole Escola makes it look easy.
Anyone who’s seen them perform, in whatever medium, has experienced a euphoric feeling of discovery, of knowing from their limbic brain that they will be forever obsessed with the person they’re watching. It’s a phenomenon that’s been happening night after night at “Oh, Mary!,” for the past year that the show has been on and off Broadway. Or, slightly less recently, it’s happened for over a decade among audiences who discovered Cole through solo shows at the Duplex, videos that predated “queer comedy,” film and TV credits within every prestige or short films that were self-made with a devastating beauty. To be in awe of Cole in whatever context has been a consistent thing. It affirms the idea that what they have, what they do and who they are come very naturally to them.
Let’s start with what Cole has: a peerless work ethic, a gorgeous ass, a playful sense of aesthetics. Possessing any of those can be unwieldy, but never with Cole. They know their inventory, and they assure everyone that there’s plenty of everything. Their mind is a well-plumbed fountain of jokes that are so elegant and accessible that other comedians will think, “What a great joke even I could have written!” But they didn’t, because Cole did, and aren’t they the lucky ones for being in the audience?
Then there’s what Cole does: They write virtuosically for themselves and others, they collaborate on a vision that becomes shared, they prove that a Broadway show can be as hard-comedy as a standup special and as sensational as a blockbuster film. “Oh, Mary!” is both a madcap biography of someone else as well as a beautiful work of autofiction about Cole’s own inner life. They do these things easily, and somehow we take none of it for granted.
And then there’s who Cole is: a lifeline of a friend, a chic vegan, an impeccable dresser. They are a connective force in our entropic culture, and they are always in pursuit of something dishonorably noble (or nobly dishonorable). Cole is an endless series of great days. And great days are never hard, always easy.
Congratulations to Cole. I hope I get to see “Les Mis” in Dutch with them again at least seven more times in this life.
