Award-winning comedian and storyteller Mike Birbiglia returns to Broadway this fall with a tale of life, death, and a highly chlorinated YMCA pool. Birbiglia takes the stage at the esteemed Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center to chronicle his coming-of-middle-age story that asks the big questions: Why are we here? What’s next? What happens when the items at the doctor’s office that you thought were decorative become functional?
The Old Man and the Pool, which played to sold-out houses in Berkeley, Chicago and Los Angeles, resonates with audiences ages 12 to 112. It’s a hilarious reminder for all of us recovering from failing bodies and a flailing world that laughter is indeed the best medicine.
Get tickets now, and remember: Mike’s here for a good time, not a long time. This strictly limited Broadway engagement ends December 30.
We are all charmed, beguiled. He says he does not have a swimmer's body, but a drowner's body. The Brooklyn YMCA is less a building than a smell, he conveys in one barnstorming riff. Birbiglia finds humor in everything around him-and tells it so smoothly he makes it look effortless. This ease on stage is a good camouflage of an ingenious comic technician. This is not the lackadaisical piece of theater it seems, but tightly constructed and wittily performed.
There is an appealing smoothness, simplicity, and sense of construction to Birbiglia's shows. (Seth Barrish, who serves as Birbiglia's regular director, surely deserves much credit.) Birbiglia excels at offering fun anecdotes, dramatizing conversations with offstage characters, making Seinfeld-style observations about daily life and performing occasional physical bits.
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