Writer, actor, and comedian Cole Escola, a native of Clatskanie, Oregon, was the sole Northwest winner of a Tony Award in Sunday’s awards ceremony at Radio City Music Hall in New York, honoring the best work of the 2024-25 Broadway season.

Escola won as Best Performer by a Leading Actor in a Play for their starring role in Oh, Mary, which they also wrote. National Public Radio’s Fresh Air describes the much-praised farce as “an intentionally ridiculous reimagining of first lady Mary Todd Lincoln,” in which Abraham Lincoln’s wife, the role in which Escola stars, becomes an alcoholic “not because of the Civil War, but because she’s desperately yearning to become a cabaret star.”

Escola told Fresh Air‘s Ann Marie Baldonado that for all of its farcical qualities, Oh, Mary! is deeply personal: “This play is about a woman with a dream that no one around her understands. A dream that the whole world is telling her is stupid and doesn’t make any sense. And I feel that way.”

Escola was also nominated as Oh, Mary!‘s author in the Best Play category, which was taken by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Purpose, following Jacobs-Jenkins’ win last year in the Best Revival category for his play Appropriate.

Kristi Turnquist, The Oregonian/Oregon Live’s excellent arts and cultural writer, profiled Escola in July 2024, after Oh, Mary! transferred from Off-Broadway to Broadway, and pointed out that Escola refers to themself on their own website as “trailer trash born and raised in rural Oregon.”

Escola is one of a very small handful of openly nonbinary performers to win Tony Awards, following J. Harrison Ghee’s best-leading-actor-in-a-musical win for Some Like It Hot and Alex Newell’s best-featured-actor-in-a-musical for Shucked, Rachel Sherman wrote in The New York Times.

“Escola, who is nonbinary, plays a self-indulgent, scheming Mary Todd Lincoln, who aspires to become a chanteuse,” Sherman wrote. “As a result, her boredom — which includes pining to perform her ‘madcap medleys’ of yesteryear — drives her to all kinds of antics. (With Cole prancing around in a hoop skirt, hilarity ensues.)

Sponsor

“The New York Times chief theater critic, Jesse Green, called Oh, Mary!, which Escola also wrote, ‘one of the best crafted and most exactingly directed Broadway comedies in years.’”

Escola was one of five people with Oregon or Washington roots nominated for this year’s Tony Awards, the 78th annual.

• Beaverton-raised Brooks Ashmanskas scored his third nomination, for his featured role in the musical Smash. Darren Criss won in that category for Maybe Happy Ending.
• Corey Brunish and Brian Rooney were nominated as producers on two productions: best new musical Operation Mincemeat, and best revival of a play, Our Town. Maybe Happy Ending won in the best new musical category, and Eureka Day in best revival of a play. Jak Malone won the featured actor in a musical category for Operation Mincemeat.
• Megan Hilty, from Bellevue, Wash., was nominated for best performance by a leading actress in a musical, for Death Becomes Her. Nicole Scherzinger won in that category, for Sunset Boulevard.

Maybe Happy Ending won the evening’s most awards, six, including best musical, out of ten nominations.

You can see a list of all the winners here, and all of the finalists here.