Nathan Lane in Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus on Broadway Tickets

Whenever three-time Tony Award winner Nathan Lane is announced to star in an upcoming Broadway production, there is a collective sense that everything is alright with the world again. And so it was in September 2018 when producer Scott Rudin announced that Lane would star as the titular character in a world premiere comedy by the genius that is Taylor Mac. This brand new play is hilariously entitled Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus and is set in 400 B.C. after much gratuitous bloodshed and gore courtesy of the fall of the Roman Empire. Our guides through the play (and the bloody mess) are the two humble maids - Gary and Janice - as they begin the cumbersome task of clearing away all the human carcasses.

Playwright Taylor Mac has established himself in the New York City area as a mighty force of non-conformism and his work has frequently defied categorization. He previously made waves off-Broadway in the fall of 2015 with his gender-bending play Hir at Playwrights Horizons, but Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus marks his Broadway debut. He was also widely celebrated for his acting performance as Shen Tei in the 2013 Public Theater production of Brecht's Good Person of Szechwan, earning a Lucille Lortel Award nomination in the process, but perhaps his most recent accomplishment was becoming a finalist in 2017 for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A 24-Decade History of Popular Music... a 24-hour epic performance marathon!

The pairing of Taylor Mac with Nathan Lane signals a match made in comedy heaven and Lane, of course, is one of the most reliable Broadway stalwarts when it comes to drawing a laugh from the audience. His iconic performances in The Producers and The Odd Couple, along with recent standout performances in comedies such as The Front Page and It's Only a Play, have set the bar extremely high... in fact, only Lane himself could probably compete with it.

Let's just hope we get a sequel to this tongue-planted-firmly-in-cheek sequel to Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus...

^{(Photos by Julieta Cervantes)}