Gary Gulman: Grandiloquent - When Words Take Flight

The Gul's unmissable new show at the Lucille Lortel Theatre is an ode to the written (and spoken) word.

A comic of a comic: My Portrait of The G-man.

There are few people other New York comics talk about with genuine reverence (mainly because comics are too busy thinking about ourselves), but in the same breath as greats like Norm, Attell, Rock, Patrice, and Burr, you'll hear us speak of The G-Man. “The Gul”. There’s a chance you might never have heard of "Criminally Underrated Comedian Gary Gulman" before, but by gum, you're gonna hear about him now.

January 20th, 2025
Greenwich Village, NY

Last night, through a whirling snowstorm that would eventually blanket New York City, I made my way to the opening night of Gary's new show at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. As is usually the case at events full of A-list celebrities, I was the guest of someone way more talented and spent much of the time trying to stop my head from swivelling off.

The show is ostensibly about Gary's love of words – his early love of books, reading, and the bottomless well of literary obsession that underlies his incredible comedic insights. He's the only comic who can dissect the abbreviations of US states with the fervour of a golden retriever who just found a wet tennis ball. (But a Golden Retriever with a Ph.D. in Literature.)

From the moment the theatre doors sealed us from the storm, Gulman took us back to his childhood in Peabody, Massachusetts, where he spent his days with raised shoulders alongside his single mother and her gaggle of Tupperware Party yentas. The story introduces us to his father, who, after leaving them at one-and-a-half, bafflingly insisted on having Gary repeat the first grade. The haunting fallout of this decision carries through the show, spawning some of the most endearing and hilarious material he's performed in his 31-year career. (And yes, to the New York comedians with therapists reading this, Alan does get a hefty shout-out.)

The audience was a murderer's row of career comedians, comedy writers, directors, and industry folk – inarguably the most challenging room in the world for a comedian. Yet, the laughs were big and many! It was like watching a magician perform in a room full of other magicians who knew all the tricks and still somehow earning a standing ovation.

Gulman peels open his chest to grapple with some of the deepest motivations for his three-decade career of transmuting pain and misfortune into laughter. This isn't just some "I'm a sad clown, please love me" festival show you stumble into off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. This is like a great novel¹ performed live on stage by someone with such linguistic mastery that I feel like a cave troll even writing this review. (Gary would have used the word dilettante).

One of several highlights comes when he, prompted by his wife's innocent query about what song is playing on the radio, bursts into a grandiloquent lecture on the bands of the grunge era. The bit demonstrates not only his ability to wrangle words with the steady expertise of a micro-surgeon but also his unrivalled talent for diving six layers deep into esoterica with an infectious obsession that had the audience in paroxysms.

He knows how ridiculously condescending he looks, dropping esoteric references to Kant and Vonnegut and expecting the audience to catch them. His self-deprecating humour is precisely why he's able to label himself and the show with a word that few have ever heard, let alone used.

The production, directed by Morris Von Stuelpnagel, features one of the most mesmerizing comedy sets I've ever seen, conceived by the brilliant Beowulf Boritt.

At the conclusion of the show, we trudged with teary eyes through the thick snowstorm to the Barrow Street Ale House to reflect and digest. It was a sight to behold: an afterparty full of career comedy writers gazing silently into the middle distance in awe when asked, "Some show, huh?" I overheard someone say something that perfectly captured the evening: "I love him so much I hate myself."

Gary Gulman: Grandiloquent is running for 5 weeks at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Tickets and information: gulmanshow.com – I implore you to experience it before it sells out.

1. His manager told me before the show that this is a loose adaptation of his memoir, Misfit: Growing Up Awkward in the '80s, which you can get here.