A renowned long-form storytelling comedian, Mike Birbiglia went all in for The New One, a sprawling tale about how he and his wife tried to conceive a child, framed around the cozy symbolism of a couch. His fans hung on every word, laughing and engaging emotionally with the thirty-something, coming-of-age story.
Birbiglia decided to sit this saga on a couch, viewing this particular piece of furniture as a kind of gauge for where you are in life. If you're college-aged or have a few roommates, a ratty couch discovered on the side of the road reflects your exploratory independence. As you enter the workforce and/or co-exist with a life partner, you become more discerning about your couch quality and, in Birbiglia's eyes, it becomes this thing you throw your body into for a respite from life.
And so, in this new show, his couch is a recurring spectre, as Birbiglia outlines how life as an adult is really this increasingly uncomfortable thing. Fans who know of how self-harming his sleepwalking illness is will be genuinely shocked by the latest litany of medical ailments Birbiglia is enduring. He mentions them, including a correctional procedure he needed in order to better his odds of conceiving a child, to highlight his physiological flaws and how he's been able to transcend them.
A plainly sweet, emotionally wrenching performance, Birbiglia is so comedically matter-of-fact about certain aspects of The New One, it almost disarms the dramatic tension of the piece. There's also a chance it might flow better with some minor tinkering (the prostitute story, for instance, seems a little indulgent). But there's no denying the transformative power of The New One, another riveting dispatch from Mike Birbiglia, one of our greatest living writers.
Birbiglia decided to sit this saga on a couch, viewing this particular piece of furniture as a kind of gauge for where you are in life. If you're college-aged or have a few roommates, a ratty couch discovered on the side of the road reflects your exploratory independence. As you enter the workforce and/or co-exist with a life partner, you become more discerning about your couch quality and, in Birbiglia's eyes, it becomes this thing you throw your body into for a respite from life.
And so, in this new show, his couch is a recurring spectre, as Birbiglia outlines how life as an adult is really this increasingly uncomfortable thing. Fans who know of how self-harming his sleepwalking illness is will be genuinely shocked by the latest litany of medical ailments Birbiglia is enduring. He mentions them, including a correctional procedure he needed in order to better his odds of conceiving a child, to highlight his physiological flaws and how he's been able to transcend them.
A plainly sweet, emotionally wrenching performance, Birbiglia is so comedically matter-of-fact about certain aspects of The New One, it almost disarms the dramatic tension of the piece. There's also a chance it might flow better with some minor tinkering (the prostitute story, for instance, seems a little indulgent). But there's no denying the transformative power of The New One, another riveting dispatch from Mike Birbiglia, one of our greatest living writers.
