Oh, Mary! boasts the funniest performance in the West End
8 / 10
With set designs that exude tongue-in-cheek period fidelity, and thundering piano-music interludes that form a running joke about 19th-century theatricals, this is more snappy lark than history lesson. Its mischievous streak is fully announced the moment Park’s pale-faced, rouge-cheeked heroine flounces on to the stage, hoop-dress and ringlets a-bobbing, in raging search of the liquor her husband (played by Giles Terera as a wonderfully furtive statesman) has just tried to hide. “Oh mother, why did I marry him?” she madly rails at a sober portrait of George Washington.
