1000 Tiny Birds

Mike Birbiglia - The Old Man And The Pool

Bristol Old Vic, 2023-10-07

Mike Birbiglia is one of my favourite American comedians, and probably the one whose style I most align myself with. After doing the crow routine for the first time, a fellow comic compared it to Birbiglia and I was thrilled. More so now to finally be able to see him live on the west end, his penultimate show of the run. It’s a masterclass. Out of the gate he is establishing the atmosphere that is spellbinding for the rest of the evening. It is a dense show of callbacks and visible structure, at times stiflingly funny, at times genuinely touching and heartbreaking. I am loathe to give away any jokes or even narrative stuff (the very ending is so well crafted on many different levels, that I couldn’t begin to spoil it, even if I wanted to). But more importantly, I leave the theatre with the burning desire to write another show. Having only days before this got Butterflies out of my system, to be sat there thinking about what else I could do, what might Red Blue Green look like, what might another show look like, to want to get out a notebook and just craft something - a genuine inspiration on that front.