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 are charged with cleaning up the bodies. It's only 400 B.C. - but it feels like the end of the world.
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.
Mac borrows lightly from 'Waiting for Godot,' but unlike Samuel Beckett, Mac doesn't indulge in repetition to the point of tedium. Lane has played this kind of absurdist character before. Here, he even uses Harpo Marx's horn to goose a laugh; yet, despite all the gags, this clown-turned-worker-turned-Fool is ultimately very poignant in his quest to save the world. Meanwhile, the usually flighty Nielsen has never been more comically stolid. Watching Lane's gnat of a character pick away at her filth-smeared carcass is theater heaven as viewed from the sewer.
| 2019 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Wig and Hair Design | Campbell Young Associates |
| 2019 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Julie White |
| 2019 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play | Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus |
| 2019 | Tony Awards | Best Costume Design of a Play | Ann Roth |
| 2019 | Tony Awards | Best Direction of a Play | George C. Wolfe |
| 2019 | Tony Awards | Best Lighting Design of a Play | Jules Fisher |
| 2019 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Kristine Nielsen |
| 2019 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Julie White |
| 2019 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Taylor Mac |
| 2019 | Tony Awards | Best Scenic Design of a Play | Santo Loquasto |
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