Review by Stuart Miller…
Gary Gulman opens his solo show, “Grandiloquent,” by discussing Grover and his star turn in “The Monster at the End of this Book,” from the folks at Sesame Street. This slender volume is for the youngest of readers–it was the first book Gulman ever tackled on his own, after kindergarten–but Gulman sees in its meta-esque commentary on self and identity a book as savvy and profound as the works of Don DeLillo or Jennifer Egan.
It’s a funny bit well told, which is par for the course for Gulman, who is celebrated for his hilariously imaginative but discursive stand up bits about abbreviating America’s states for the post office (video) or on what happened when he took role playing in the bedroom too seriously (video). But Gulman usually has something on his mind and he has also earned acclaim for finding the funny in weighty matters: his special, “The Great Depresh,” dug deep into his lifelong, occasionally dangerously debilitating battle with depression; “Born on Third Base” examines America’s lack of humaneness toward the poor and working class.


The difference between stand-up comedy and an off-Broadway solo show is more than just a fancier set and a longer run time. To create a show that feels like theater, the comic must deliver a performance that is coherent both narratively and thematically.
Gulman who succeeds because he’s witty and introspective and a master storyteller with a love of words, nails that difference.
The Grover bit ends with him telling us, “This is a show about my childhood and what it did to me” and you later realize this segment contained multitudes. (Yes, he throws in a Whitman reference.) The jokes about “meta” and the name-dropping of postmodern authors reveal not only a love of reading and an intellectual curiosity, but a deeply felt insecurity born of childhood wounds inflicted by adults’ bad decisions, selfish behavior or callous disregard for his needs.
He explains that those scars make him “bombastic. I’m orotund, I’m damn near grandiloquent.The definition of grandiloquent is the use of extravagant or flowery language especially when intended to impress.” (Of course, his material pokes fun at himself and other grandiloquent folks so he easily subverts the negative connotation.)
The story could easily have sounded whiny or self-pitying in less assured hands but Gulman’s impeccable comic timing and vivid imagery had the audience laughing in all but the most heart-rending sections.
Gulman recounts being precocious and a sort of old soul early on. “My parents talked to me like I was their bridge partner. And so I had an immense vocabulary, I was seven but started forty percent of my sentences with ‘Evidently.’ Nobody talked baby talk. They never said you wanna go night night? I would have laughed in their faces…. Don’t infantilize me. Do I want to wind down? Certainly. It’s nigh onto nine pm. I’m going to grab a pipe from the pipe carousel and Mom, be a lamb and pour me two fingers of Glenfddich. And I will retire.”


But he was also sensitive kid raised essentially as an only child by a needy and fairly oblivious mother (His two brothers were both at least a decade older and when they were around delighted in tormenting him.)
“If you’re not familiar with the dynamic of the single mother and youngest son, basically she was my first wife. We had a song.The Helen Reddy classic, “You and Me Against the World.” Very healthy. Every six-year-old boy should serve as a middle-aged woman’s savior.”
His father only saw him once a week yet still decided he knew best and insisted the school hold back his oversized bookworm of a son after first grade to give him time to mature. (The 6’6” comic was always the biggest in his class.)
But Gulman’s teacher the second time was ruthless and unsympathetic; he calls her Ayn Rand and recounts how she lets the children vote as to whether Gulman should be allowed to miss detention one day at his mother’s behest. “I didn’t get a single vote. But I wasn’t surprised, kids are savages,given the opportunity they’ll drop the boulder on Piggy every single time,” he says, deftly weaving in yet another literary reference before noting that Rand knew the kids would vote that way and did this to humiliate the 7-year-old Gulman, who soon became depressed and contemplated suicide for the first time.
Most of the show is rooted deeply in Gulman’s childhood, with vintage pop culture jokes, such as when he calls Lite Brite an “offshoot of Seurat’s pointillism.” But near the end he turns toward reflection and what he has learned in therapy (with more modern references to “Fresh Air” and “The Moth”) that culminates in a pointed attack on the falsity in the cliche “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
He also veers wildly off-topic for one fantastic stemwinder about the history of grunge music and Pearl Jam (with digressions about NBA guard Mookie Blaylock, director Cameron Crowe plus Jane Austen, Grendel and “Wicked”). But it is pointedly on theme. The story underscores how his intellectual insecurity causes him to bombard his wife with way too much information so that a simple question “Who sings this,” leads to an answer that makes a day trip “feel like a hostage crisis.”
Except, of course, it wouldn’t because Gulman is so entertaining and thoughtful and (yes, Gary) so smart that listening to him ramble on about any topic would probably be a treat. And listening to his well-constructed, insightful, moving and flat-out funny show as it winds its way toward his own understand of both his own healing and of Grover’s journey is time exceedingly well spent.
“Grandiloquent” is playing through February 8th at the Lucille Lortell Theatre, 121 Christopher Street. Run time is approximately 90 minutes.
Photo credits: Michaelah Reynolds