He heads to the Shubert Theatre for a show on Oct. 25
By Nick A. Zaino III Globe correspondent, Updated October 23, 2025, 11:30 a.m.
Gary Gulman performs at the Shubert Theatre on Oct. 25.
Gary Gulman has always had a touch of intellectual insecurity. Back in his days at Boston College, he remembers being acutely aware that his classmates had earned their spots with their grades, whereas Gulman was there on a football scholarship. So he tried harder, sitting up front, forever with his hand up to speak.
“It was a bizarre persona,” he said, speaking by phone, “to go to Boston College, as a sort of a football meathead who was vying to answer every possible question that was asked, especially [in] my English and history classes.”
The thing is, Gulman does truly love language, and has since he was frequenting the Lynnfield Library as a youngster. It’s a big reason why he’s a stand-up comedian now, with a deeply moving memoir called “Misfit: Growing Up Awkward In the 80s.” And why his new show, which comes to the Shubert Theatre on Saturday, is called “Grandiloquent.”
“Its Oxford English Dictionary definition was so perfect,” said Gulman. “It said, I think, ‘the use of flowery language, especially when intended to impress.’ And I thought that was like it was written to describe the style of a lot of the jokes I’ve done over the years.” He’s even dressing the part, with a more professorial look.
In one bit from the new show, which comes to Boston after a monthlong run in New York earlier this year, Gulman talks about writing a Thanksgiving-themed story in grade school, told from a turkey’s point of view, called “Who’s the Turkey Now?”
“It was during an experimental phase where I wanted to dabble in local color realism,” he says in the show.
He thought the Boston accent was wonderfully sarcastic, so, in his story, he had his protagonist drop his r’s, spelling “fahmah” and “cah” phonetically instead of “farmer” and “car.” He was shocked when he got his paper back full of red marks. “I understand what happened,” he says in the show. “She thought it was more likely that I didn’t know how to spell ‘car’ than that I was channeling William Faulkner.
As his career has progressed, Gulman has gotten deeper into his love of language, and it has shown in his act, although he is fairly modest about it. “I really think that I’ve stood out in a field of people who speak at an eighth or ninth grade level by speaking at an 11th or 12th‚” he said. “I really don’t think there’s much I added to my lexicon during college.”
Still, he is grateful to have developed a following that will go along with him on a tangent, like his six-minute single-topic riff on state abbreviations during a now-famous “Conan” appearance in 2016. “Somehow, I’ve attracted an audience who is patient with that type of stuff,” he said. “I couldn’t do this at an open mic in the Village, or actually, where I came up, just doing a lot of bar shows and one-nighters around New England and Boston. So I was able to attract an audience that is patient with certain flourishes in terms of language, but also content.”
There is a method to his use of language, something that crystalized for Gulman in a conversation with a fan from Salt Lake City. “We talked about bathos,” he said, “which is this technique where you use elevated language to speak of the trivial or the lower status, and you use lower status speech to talk about the elevated and the high status.”
The idea of bathos was familiar to Gulman, who saw it all around him growing up in Boston. The Hub seems almost over-represented in the pantheon of famous comedians. Bill Burr, Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno, Sam Jay, Paula Poundstone, Steven Wright, Patrice O’Neal, and dozens of others grew up in the area. And yes, there is a local predilection to speak loudly and quickly, but Gulman thinks the contrast between the sound and content is key to the appeal.
“It is very funny to hear a blue collar guy speak in an elevated tone,” he said. “It’s an interesting formula that really comes off well, and there are so many well-read Bostonians who sound like longshoremen. It’s a great combination.”
Gulman’s work has also grown more autobiographical over the years. An earlier joke of his was, “Every cookie is a sugar cookie. A cookie without sugar is a cracker.” The difference between his old material and his turn inward was felt most starkly in his 2019 HBO special “The Great Depresh,” in which he opened up about the effect of his depression. He continued that with his 2023 special “Born on Third Base” and in “Misfit.”
“I’ve been rewarded so grandly for opening up that I think that will be at least a component of my future shows,” he said. He cites George Carlin, who would sometimes move from wordplay to lists of funny topics to political satire in the course of one show, as an inspiration to mix things up in his stage show. But he also likes to have an arc.
“I do like to fall back on a theme, just because I find limitations are so productive for creativity. So I think I’d like to get a little bit older in my observations. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, and maybe delving into certain things that I’ve experienced in my 40s, and the bullet train that is my 50s.”
Topics like marriage and relationships have been largely absent in Gulman’s shows, mainly because he felt too many other comedians cover that kind of material. That may change in future shows. “I feel like perhaps at this point, I have an audience,” he said. “I don’t have to distinguish myself from other comedians in terms of my content, and maybe the people will be open to hearing more about me.”
Fans shouldn’t expect another memoir like “Misfit,” but Gulman has been working on a novella. He said he has a setting and an ending for the book, but his tour schedule has kept him from making too much progress. “I think that’s something that I will get a little deeper into this summer,” he said.
Gulman is looking to keep growing in his art for decades to come. “I’ll probably do comedy until I’m 80,” he said. He remembers Colin Quinn and Tony V telling him that comedy was something you can keep improving at into your 70s. And Gulman says he feels fortunate to have found comedy, as someone who peaked as a basketball player in his 20s.
“I’m really, really lucky,” he said, “to have found this thing that you can continue to work at and get better at.”
GARY GULMAN: GRANDILOQUENT
Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. at the Boch Center Shubert Theatre. www.bochcenter.org