How to still find cheap tickets to 'Oh, Mary!'

New York may be a bona fide theater town — home to the Great White Way, baby! — but anecdotally, I can tell you that most people I know almost never take in the delights of the local stage, for one very obvious reason: it’s too damn expensive.

This reality can be particularly stark when the city’s got a bona fide smash; remember people shelling out $1,000 and more for…. Hamilton? And right now we’ve got a much more deserving smash on our hands: Oh, Mary! 

Cole Escola’s feverish, poppers-tinged imagining of Mary Todd Lincoln’s life as a frustrated cabaret singer has become the hottest ticket in town since it opened off-Broadway at the start of the year (it’s now on capital-b Broadway as of July), and deservedly so.

I’m no theater critic but I can tell you when I saw the show back in February I spent literally the entire time laughing (this is not hyperbole), and more broadly, it’s a rare treat when when a niche local comedian becomes the center of the zeitgeist. New Yorkers shouldn’t be shut out of that just because they don’t have hundreds of dollars to drop on a single ticket.

Currently, though, tickets are in-demand and expensive, and they’re also volatile: earlier this week the cheapest options available through the show’s Telecharge website were $323, but as of this writing, a $223 option has become available as well.

So how can one land a more affordable ticket? You’ve got a few options.

• The lottery: Like many Broadway shows these days, Oh, Mary! holds a daily digital lottery for $47 tickets, with a limit of two tickets per person. The lottery opens at 12am and closes at 3pm the day before the performance. More info on lottery tickets can be found here.
• Rush tickets: $43 rush tickets are available at the box office on the day of every Oh, Mary! performance, with the box office opening at 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday, and 12 p.m. on Sunday. This option isn’t for the faint of heart, however — if the good people of Reddit are to be believed (and in my opinion, they are), if you don’t line up at 6 a.m. or earlier, you’re almost certainly out of luck.
• The TDF passport program: The Theatre Development Fund, a local performing arts nonprofit, regularly offers discounted Broadway tickets for members (Oh, Mary! options go for $20 and $40, according to a rep for the show) in a bid to allow a wider swath of New Yorkers to be able to access the theater. Students, union members, people under 30, artists, non-profit workers, retirees, and those on disability all potentially qualify; you can check out the program’s eligibility requirements and apply here).
• Stubhub: Your mileage will vary significantly on this one, but StubHub has some cheaper options available for this week’s shows compared to sites like Telecharge or TodayTix (the lowest-priced ones on StubHub are in the neighborhood of $150, at press time). Anecdotally, prices for shows often drop on the day-of, if you happen to be looking last-minute, but there are no guarantees. As always, read the fine print for details like whether your seat will have an obstructed view, and follow the usual best practices for making sure your tickets are real.

Beyond all these options, reps for Oh, Mary! note that $79 box seats — available in person at the box office only — are sometimes available if you stop by. And if you’re willing to play the long game, they also recommend keeping an eye out for extension announcements (you can sign up for the play’s listserv via the website), as lower-priced tickets are usually the first to be sold out when new shows are added. 

The show is currently set to run through Nov. 10, but given that it’s extended multiple times off-Broadway and has since moved on to a wildly popular run on Broadway, an added run of shows seems likely. To wit: I rushed to buy a ticket to the off-Broadway version this winter “before it closed.” I paid $76 with fees, and it was worth every cent.

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