Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus

A wickedly dark comedy set in the aftermath of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.

Set during the fall of the Roman Empire just after the blood-soaked conclusion of Shakespeare's play, the years of bloody battles are over, the country has been stolen by madmen, and there are casualties everywhere. And two very lowly servants — Gary and Janice — are charged with cleaning up the bodies. It's the year 400 — but it feels like the end of the world.

'A raucous comedy whose subject is tragedy...which Mac engages with gloriously raunchy humor and blazing intuition, and an aching tenderness that sneaks up on you and wraps itself around your heart.' — New York Stage Review

'[A] zany, bloody, audacious new play.' — Time Out, New York

'The iconoclastic vision, the captivating balance of highbrow and low, the undercurrent of compassion for a rarely deserving species – all stay true and really rather glorious.' — Deadline

'Mac's comedy, among other things, is a bruised valentine to the awesome yet limited power of the theater.' — The Wrap

'Delectably raunchy and macabre.' — Vanity Fair

'There's no shortage of art and craft in this offbeat show.' — Variety

'A philosophical vaudeville depicting the savagery of elites, the pettiness of proles, the foolishness of dreamers…Soon, the battle lines are drawn between those, of whatever class, who would try to save the world but fail — the comedians, that is — and those who won't try at all: the tragedians.' — New York Times

Taylor Mac (who uses “judy”—lowercase [sic]—as a gender pronoun) is the author of Joy and Pandemic; The Hang (composed by Matt Ray); Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus; A 24-Decade History of Popular Music; Prosperous Fools; The Fre; Hir; The Walk Across America for Mother Earth; The Lily’s Revenge; The Young Ladies Of; Red Tide Blooming; The Be(A)st of Taylor Mac; and the revues Comparison Is Violence; Holiday Sauce; and The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville (created with Mandy Patinkin, Susan Stroman, and Paul Ford). Mac is the first American to receive the International Ibsen Award; is a MacArthur Fellow, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Tony nominee for Best Play; and is the recipient of the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History (with Matt Ray), the Doris Duke Artist Award, a Guggenheim, the Herb Alpert Award, a Drama League Award, the Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, the Edwin Booth Award, two Helpmann Awards, a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, two Obies, two Bessies, and an Ethyl Eichelberger.

'Fabulous and bedraggled: a defiant and beautiful mess… Welcome to the world of Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, where carnage and camp coexist'

'No one knows how to create a beautiful mess quite like creative genius Taylor Mac, who doesn't disappoint with this weird, sexy, uncomfortable romp through Titus's bloody banquet room… This sort of wacky, wonderful production isn't typically presented to mainstream audiences, but I'm so thrilled the world has flipped enough to let it be so. It's the reason live theater persists: to imagine and confront the realities of life, and death, that we typically avoid at all costs'

'A vigorous mash-up of high- and lowbrow… Gary's got heart and brains and guts (many, many guts)'

'Taylor Mac has the smarts to take on the big themes and find credible and incredible arguments in each… The language of Gary is marked by the play's high style, by its pathos and its rhythm… Mac's ability to elevate doggerel to verse is no small thing: it is the work of a real writer expressing depths in a popular form'

'Gary is a farce, a piece of messy circus… There is nothing like it on Broadway, and that is to be welcomed. It is an argument for art, and a passionate call for resistance'