“Birbiglia is creating something of an autobiographical life chronology with his work, and one can only hope that when he’s 56, he comes up with another piece – emotional, funny, heartwarming, and everything in between.”
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" 'The Old Man & The Pool' is a really touching piece of theatre, that also manages to be a hilarious night of stand-up."
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“Despite his musings on life’s end point, the show remains easy – even comforting – viewing. Birbiglia shares his personal anecdotes with us as if we were his old friends. With artful physicality and natural audience interaction, he airs the panic that most of us try hard to bury. Mischievous, honest and profound, it is a piece that makes gloriously moving waves.”
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"Birbiglia deftly takes us through a set that sometimes dives deeply but mostly stays splashing in the middle lane. What he lacks as a swimmer he more than makes up for as a storyteller."
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“[Birbiglia has] a natural ease with the audience, impeccable comic timing, an ability to turn physical clown, clever scriptwriting structured around multiple little callbacks, a world view that sees absurdities in all areas of life but with an underlying seriousness that can halt an audience’s laughter in its tracks.”
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“Like so much about the evening, it’s an acute observation delivered, almost disguised, in a flurry of laughter. These waters are far from still, but they run deep.”
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“Where other midlife male standups splash in the shallows of domesticity, dinner parties and feeling tired, Birbiglia – on a cool blue set tiled to resemble his local swimming pool – plunges into the deep end of mortality, families and the meaning of life.”
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“In a mash-up between stand-up comedy and theatre ‘Mike Birbiglia’s The Man and the Pool’ is an engaging and truly funny hit of a show.”
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