Nathan Lane and Andrea Martin Will Star in New Taylor Mac Play

[edjames]

Today's NYTimes reports...

Nathan Lane and Andrea Martin Will Star in New Taylor Mac Play

• Sept. 11, 2018
  

Who cleans up after politicians make a mess? Taylor Mac, the intentionally outrageous performance artist/playwright, has been pondering that question, and will offer an answer on Broadway next spring.

 

The producer Scott Rudin announced Tuesday that he would present Taylor Mac’s “Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus” at the Booth Theater, opening April 11. The production will star Nathan Lane and Andrea Martin, and will be directed by George C. Wolfe.

 

“I’m really interested in — especially right now — cycles of mess, cycles of revenge,” Mr. Mac said in an interview last year with the theater website Howlround. “That cycle is fascinating, and it seems we need a play about it from the perspective of people who are responsible for the cleanup, but who don’t get any of the benefits of the mess or the cleanup.”

 

“Titus Andronicus,” referred to in the play’s title, is an especially gory Shakespeare tragedy about revenge and power at the end of the Roman Empire. “Gary” is set during the fall of that empire, when, according to press materials, “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 Martin — are charged with cleaning up the bodies.”

 

The MAP Fund, which gave a grant to support the play’s development, called the work “a grotesque, an existential romp, and a political treatise about onslaught, escalation, and sequels.”

 

Mr. Mac (who prefers the pronoun “judy”) is best known as a performance artist who wrote and has been appearing around the country in “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” an ambitious, sprawling and provocative examination of the American story as understood through song; the work was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

 

But Mr. Mac is also a playwright, recently represented Off Broadway with “Hir,” a well-reviewed comedy about a wildly dysfunctional family.

 

Mr. Lane is a three-time Tony Award winner, for “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “The Producers,” and last season’s revival of “Angels in America.” Ms. Martin has two Tonys, for “My Favorite Year” and “Pippin.”

 

“Gary” is the fourth play produced by Mr. Rudin announced for the current Broadway season. He is also producing a new adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” as well as revivals of “The Waverly Gallery” and “King Lear.”

[bnm73]

An interesting premise and a double-barrel cast. I just hope they don't eat the leftovers from the banquet...unless there are plenty of Sweeny Todd references.

[bostonman]

Lane is always entertaining, but I tend to feel like he's always playing himself. He's very funny, though I feel like he often plays for laughs a bit too much.

 

Martin, on the other hand, is one of the most inventive and honestly hilarious actresses I can think of. This should be fun.