A Port Washington native recently earned his first Tony Nomination for co-producing his first Broadway play.
But success didn’t come overnight for “Oh, Mary!” co-producer Tommy Doyle, who rose from nearly failing out of Schreiber High School to working as an Army intelligence analyst before graduating from Columbia University after completing community college in Maryland.
Doyle is one of the producers nominated for “Best Play” for co-producing the hit “Oh, Mary!” at the Lyceum Theatre.
The dark comedy, written and initially performed by Cole Escola, recounts the fictionalized story of Mary Todd Lincoln’s spiraling life around the time of her husband’s assassination. The show consistently performs at near capacity and has already become one of Broadway’s highest-grossing plays in less than a year.
While Doyle’s first producing gig has garnered great success, his journey leading to the Great White Way hasn’t been a straight path.
Doyle’s passion for musical theater grew while he was a student at Paul D. Schreiber High School, where he graduated in 2011. There, he first performed in the 2006 Port Summer Show in the 1920s musical “No, No Nanette.”
“I kind of caught the bug as a performer,” Doyle said.
With not much money at home, Doyle treated the summer shows, and any way he could perform, as his summer camp experiences.
During the school year, Doyle became the leading man in as many plays and musicals as he could audition for, from Dany Zuko in “Grease” to Sky Masterson in “Guys and Dolls.”
Through the drama department, Doyle said he found his community and calling.
“Where is your tribe? Where are the people that make you feel seen?” Doyle asked himself in high school.
Hanging out with friends and performing in stage shows became some of Doyle’s only motivators to attend school. After continuing to not study for tests or complete his homework, Doyle nearly failed out of high school before the Schreiber program, Save Our Seniors, helped him barely graduate.
After attending Marymount Manhattan College and auditioning for different shows around the city, with little money to his name after working construction jobs, Doyle said he didn’t have a sense of direction or purpose. The death of his grandmother, whom he said was one of his biggest supporters, didn’t help.
But wanting to try again and complete a four-year university, Doyle saw his way out of future ruin through working in the Army.
In 2016, Doyle joined the Army as a military intelligence analyst, where he served two deployments in Afghanistan as a lead analyst for high-profile attacks in the capital city Kabul, to collecting aerial data and administrative work when stationed in South Korea.
Doyle would also work at the National Security Agency in Washington, D.C., and while he said he can’t divulge much more about his work during his five-year career, it shaped him into the man he is today.
“I was in a bad place at 22, and the military gave me the direction, discipline and common purpose to reset so much of my entire life,” Doyle said. “[It] put me on a path to redemption.”
Through the military, Doyle also said he was able to leave his bubble in Port Washington and become lifelong friends with people of different backgrounds that he otherwise would have never met.
Despite whatever life threw at him, a love for musical theater persisted throughout Doyle’s journey to the Tonys.
Even when stationed in D.C., Doyle would travel back to New York and crash on his friends’ couches to hang out and watch new shows, and attend shows at the Kennedy Center.
“I did my best to stay aware of what was happening in the industry,” Doyle said.
During this time, Doyle also attended Anne Arundel Community College, earning an associate’s degree with a 4.0 GPA, which he proudly displays on his LinkedIn page even after later graduating from Columbia University with a bachelor’s degree in economics.
“There is no path that is linear,” Doyle said. “You can do a lot of things in your life, and you can live a more interesting life, and you don’t need to go to college at 18.”
Last May, Doyle graduated from Columbia University after performing in as many shows as he could and serving as the Columbia University Performing Arts League president.
Wanting to pursue his dream of producing his own Broadway show, Doyle networked as graduation grew closer and pitched his thesis analyzing consumer behavior and theatrical ticketing. Doyle found that shows who transitioned from off-Broadway to Broadway and effectively capitalized themselves often had the most commercial success.
Doyle said his thesis’s conclusions aligned with the success of “Oh, Mary!,” which moved to Broadway last year following record-breaking success off-Broadway. Doyle joined the “Oh, Mary!” team by partnering with fellow producer Tyler Mount and helped secure funding for the show as it made the daunting leap to the big stage.
Since joining “Oh, Mary!” Doyle has also co-produced the musical Dead Outlaw, which tells the story of the failed outlaw Emler McCurdy, whose preserved body became a sideshow attraction. The show opened on April 27 at the Longacre Theatre.
Whether it was his grandmother as a kid, friends in high school, colleagues in the Army, or producer partners as an adult, Doyle said he hasn’t gotten to where he’s at on his own.
“When people believe in you, and then also when you believe in a show, and you’re really passionate about the show, it can really make your career,” Doyle said.
