Bowen Yang will make his Broadway debut as Mary Todd Lincoln in Oh, Mary! on September 15 at the Lyceum Theatre. The move sends a Saturday Night Live veteran into a role that has already cycled through several names, while the production keeps selling tickets through July 10, 2027.
September 15 at Lyceum Theatre
Yang said he wanted the debut to carry “the utmost seriousness and gravitas and respect,” a standard that helps explain why he waited to step in. He was approached about the role last summer, when he was still slated to return to Saturday Night Live for part of the season, and passed at that point because, in his words, “I was too yoked to that timeframe to give myself the proper runway.”
He returned to the Lyceum for his fifth visit after his final SNL episode in December and saw Hannah Solow perform in the role. By then, the decision had flipped from refusal to commitment, with the show no longer just a booking opportunity but the place where he chose to make his first Broadway appearance.
Oh, Mary! keeps expanding
Oh, Mary! was written by Cole Escola and originally starred Cole Escola before moving to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre after a sold-out, extended run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. The production was initially scheduled as a limited run, but its Broadway life has stretched well past that first frame, which is why a debut like Yang’s now lands inside an established commercial hit rather than a risky experiment.
The title role has also been held by Betty Gilpin, John Cameron Mitchell, Jinkx Monsoon, Tituss Burgess, Jane Krakowski, Maya Rudolph, and Megan Stalter. Yang’s entry continues that rotation while keeping the show’s core selling point intact: the comic figure of Mary Todd Lincoln, played inside a production that imagines the final weeks before Abraham Lincoln’s assassination through her eyes.
Bowen Yang after SNL
Yang arrives with eight seasons on Saturday Night Live behind him, plus multiple Emmy nominations and screen credits that include Wicked, Fire Island, Bros, and The Afterparty. He was also Saturday Night Live’s first Chinese American cast member, which gives this debut a different weight from a standard celebrity crossover.
“It’s a show that is at first about regrets, in the way that I regretted letting this offer go,” he said after seeing it again at the Lyceum Theatre. He also said, “Mary feels trapped by her own decisions and then she understands that it is, in fact, other people's decisions that have sort of kept her in this place.”
Tickets for Oh, Mary! are on sale through Saturday, July 10, 2027, and that date is the practical marker for anyone tracking the run as a long commercial booking rather than a one-off publicity move. The sharper question now is how long Yang stays once the curtain rises on September 15, because the production has already shown it can extend far beyond the run anyone first expected.
