“Taking a show about these two old New Yorkers around the country let us figure out how to make it accessible to a broader audience that didn’t necessarily grow up in New York in the ’70s,” Kroll says.Īlthough there is a polished script that involves a play-within-a-play by Gil and George, Oh, Hello on Broadway allows for a lot of improvisation.
They continued to workshop the show on a national tour, saying “Oh, hello” to cities including Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. “At least, that’s where they think they belong,” Mulaney interjects.īefore adapting their senior citizen shtick into what they describe as a “proper play” for a brief run Off-Broadway last fall, Kroll and Mulaney teamed up with two-time Tony-nominated director Alex Timbers. We realized that Gil and George really belong on Broadway.” “Afterward, everyone asked, ‘What’s next?’ We joked, ‘ Oh, Hello on Broadway,’ but we were sort of serious. “It was one of the most fun times I’ve ever had on stage or otherwise, and the response was crazy,” Kroll recalls. Shortly before Kroll Show ended in 2015, Kroll and Mulaney appeared live as Gil and George in an hourlong improvised Q&A at the 92nd Street Y. “Well, 10 years of unfocused work, about a year of very specific goals,” Mulaney adds. “We’re lucky to have been doing these guys for about 10 years.” “I think these characters have resonated with people because their friendship is very deep and important to both of them, and you can see that,” Kroll explains.
“But then one night you see them covered in dandruff, maybe their briefcase just got stolen, and you realize that they’re not cool and that their life is kind of a bummer.” “They’re sort of like those professors you looked up to for a semester,” says Mulaney, a former Saturday Night Live writer with a pair of stand-up specials on Netflix. We’re more comfortable as Gil and George than we are as ourselves.” “These guys are obviously very funny to us, but we also have a genuine love and affection for them,” says Kroll of the Upper East Side eccentrics. The same cranky characters later became fan favorites on Kroll’s sketch series, Kroll Show, which ran for three seasons on Comedy Central. Kroll and Mulaney were inspired to create their elderly alter egos more than a decade ago at Manhattan’s venerable Strand Bookstore, where they spotted a couple of crotchety old men buying separate copies of Alan Alda’s memoir, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed. The longtime friends and collaborators soon began playing Gil and George to host a popular live stand-up comedy showcase in the East Village. The two-man comedy opens October 10 for a limited engagement at the Lyceum Theatre. Geegland, respectively, in Oh, Hello on Broadway. Making their Broadway debuts, 30-something actor-comedians Nick Kroll and John Mulaney star as fictional 70-something fusspots Gil Faizon and George St. Thanks to two goofballs in gray wigs, everything old is new again on the Great White Way.
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