The stand-up comic presents his latest show off-Broadway.
Professional political troll and recently departed member of the Trump administration Vivek Ramaswamy kicked the MAGA hornet nest earlier this month when he defended America’s H-1B visa program (heavily utilized by the tech industry to import foreign engineers). He made a lengthy post on X about how American culture venerates “the jock over the valedictorian,” leading to a society that simply does not produce enough of its own intellectual talent, STEM or otherwise. On this point, at least, comedian Gary Gulman might agree with him.
Long one of the most cerebral performers in stand-up, Gulman reveals in Grandiloquent, his new show at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, that he was also a precocious child—which didn’t earn him many friends in suburban Massachusetts in the late ’70s. In fact, the bookish and sensitive Gulman felt isolated as an 8-year-old who towered over his classmates and often began sentences with the word “evidently.”
It didn’t help matters that his father made Gulman repeat the first grade because his maturity didn’t match his own at the same age (during the Great Depression). In lieu of child friends, Gulman sought companionship from his own mother and other middle-aged women in the neighborhood—he dazzled at a Tupperware party. He recounts it all in his signature halting and deadpan prose in an event that feels half comedy show, half therapy session.
Bookish audiences are likely to find a kindred spirit in Gulman, who drops references to The Price Is Right and Immanuel Kant with the same public-radio verve, fully expecting that his audience will keep up. (A segment in which he re-creates a lecture on grunge music that he once delivered to his wife led my husband to nudge me in recognition of the familiar behavior.) For those of us born without stunning good looks or natural athletic ability, this know-it-all act seems to be the one way we can demonstrate our value.
But the ever-curious Gulman interrogates this behavior too, admitting that every part of his schtick is designed to convey his intelligence. Like an Instagram influencer, he is scrupulously on-brand—and he confesses that it is exhausting to rehearse clever turns-of-phrase and witty references, all with an ear to making them sound spontaneous. This is the theater we all perform every single day.
Director Moritz von Stuelpnagel hews the Gary Gulman brand with his unobtrusive production, which spotlights the performer and allows him to complicate his own story. Tilly Grimes costumes him like a professor, the autumnal colors of his plaid blazer conjuring the New England September that Gulman describes early in the show. Scenic designer Beowulf Boritt, who has been going through something of a bookshelf phase, flanks him with tall stacks of bright yellow books, so we feel that we’re seeing a stand-up show in a surreal library.
Gulman is quite aware that his style of humor is not for everyone—his own family included. “But you don’t make us laugh,” he says in the voice of his mother, recalling her reaction to the moment he told her he wanted to be a comedian (Gulman slips in and out of his Massachusetts dialect like it’s an XXL Patriots jersey). She later reminds him that it’s stand-up, not an audition for the Moth.
But I suspect that Gulman’s gentle, brainy style of humor will find a receptive audience with the kind of people who listen to NPR in the driveway, buy tickets to off-Broadway shows, and absolutely venerate the valedictorian over the jock. There are plenty of us in America, and if Ramaswamy could only get over his disdain he might find that we have plenty in common.