Gary: A Sequel To Titus Andronicus - Booth Theatre

Nathan Lane returns to Broadway in Taylor Mac's comedy Gary: A Sequesl to Titus Andronicus at the Booth Theatre.

Kristine Nielsen, left, and Nathan Lane in Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

Three-time Tony Award® winner Nathan Lane and Tony-nominee Kristine Nielsen will star this season on Broadway in the world premiere of, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, the new comedy by Pulitzer Prize finalist and MacArthur Fellow, Taylor Mac. Directed by five-time Tony Award winner George C. Wolfe, Gary is set just after the blood-soaked conclusion of William Shakespeare’s first tragedy, Titus Andronicus.

In Gary, Taylor Mac’s singular world view intersects with Shakespeare’s first tragedy, Titus Andronicus. In Mac’s extraordinary new play, set during the fall of the Roman Empire, the years of bloody battles are over. The civil war has ended. The country has been stolen by madmen, and there are casualties everywhere. And two very lowly servants – Lane and Nielsen – are charged with cleaning up the bodies. It’s the year 400 – but it feels like the end of the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vW3lbBVRQw

GARY - A SEQUEL TO TITUS ANDRONICUS - WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

So for me, at least, the most convincing and powerful moments came when the performances aligned with the gravity of the premise. Gary's speech about the power of art to create new realities was one such moment for Mr. Lane: You could feel the hope in the hyperbole he spoke of.

Jesse Green, New York Times

Gary, in other words, isn't fooling around. Like its hero, it has big plans, and like its hero, those plans do not come off with perfect smoothness. Lane is tremendous, and Julie White is screamingly funny as the play's third character, Carol: a middle-class midwife racked with guilt over her bystander role in one of Titus's many subtragedies, in which her own throat was nonfatally slit. (She's a bleeding-neck liberal.) But although Nielsen-who took over the role of Janice just before previews-wrings laughs from her signature facial aftershocks, the performance lacks variety; not all of the story's beats play out clearly, and while George C. Wolfe's production delivers all the flatulence a person could desire, there are stretches where it runs out of gas.

Adam Feldman, Time Out New York Return to BROADWAY page