Depression and a troubled childhood have served Gary Gulman well. The former served as the inspiration for his acclaimed HBO comedy special The Great Depresh, while the latter provides the bulk of his material for his one-man show currently playing at off-Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theatre. It’s titled Grandiloquent, the definition of which the comedian helpfully provides in the course of the evening.
The word, he explains, means “the use of extravagant or flowery language, especially when intended to impress.” Gulman is certainly guilty of that, which he ascribes to his “intellectual insecurity.” But he uses that insecurity to his advantage, demonstrating his remarkable ability with words in this hilarious dissection of the upbringing that led him on the path to his current career. Not that there weren’t pitfalls along the way, including multiple bouts with severe depression that at one point led to his being hospitalized.
But there’s little evidence of that in his current show in which he seems to take endless delight in his ability to weave an amusing verbal spell. Sporting a prominent goatee that makes him look like a hip university professor, his delivery of perfectly crafted one-liners is frequently accompanied by sly smiles acknowledging the resulting laughs, of which there are many. He knows how good he is, but he’s not crass enough to laugh at his own jokes. Except, that is, when he occasionally flubs a line, for which he amusingly takes himself to task.
[Read Roma Torre’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Performing on a Beowulf Boritt-designed set featuring massive bookcases, one of which is meaningfully toppled over, Gulman begins the evening, directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, by talking about the first book he ever read by himself, entitled The Monster at the End of This Book. He says that it led not only to his love of reading but also his appreciation for post-modernism, drawing a direct line from the children’s book to the works of such authors as Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo and managing to make the argument fully convincing.
“This show is about my childhood and what it did to me,” Gulman informs us before proceeding to describe his inordinately close bond with his mother after his parents split up when he was one-and-a-half years old. They even had their own song, he ruefully admits, namely Helen Reddy’s “You and Me Against the World,” which pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
Relating anecdotes revolving around such things as his mother’s Tupperware parties which he describes as being with “a flock of yentas,” being forced to repeat first grade at his father’s inexplicable insistence to school authorities, and dealing with a tyrannical teacher whom he compares to Ayn Rand, Gulman provides a hilariously deadpan account of his young years that proves as poignant as it is funny.
But his comedic mastery is best demonstrated in the lengthy routine that caps the evening in which he lives up to the show’s title with his description of his bombastic response to his wife’s innocent question upon hearing a song on the radio. The answer, the short-lived rock band Audioslave, proves merely a springboard for a lengthy dissertation on the music and the bands of the grunge era that uproariously demonstrates the truth of Gulman’s self-deprecating observation, “The subtext of my 31-year comedy career is, I’m smart, right?”
Gary Gulman: Grandiloqent opened January 19, 2025, at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and runs through February 8. Tickets and information: lortel.org
