If storytelling and comedy lie on different ends of a pool, Mike swims fast, baring all as he presents a masterclass in meaningful comedic storytelling
Have you ever planned to go for a quick dip in the pool, only to be lured by the shimmering waters over cool blue tiles, tempting you to dive headfirst into the deep end instead? Mike Birbiglia’s solo stand-up comedy show (currently streaming on Netflix) does just that. He tells clever, warm, and endearing tales of his midlife highs and lows — mainly health-related, mainly lows.
Mike is the Guy Next Door — a sort of agreeable, relaxed everyman in pants and a button-up shirt, emitting golden retriever (after a long, tiring day) energy. The kind of Nice Guy we would actually root for (which seems to be his brand). His 80-minute run offers one plenty to be charmed by — including moments of raw vulnerability and pure emotion, alongside clever call-backs, and a firm grasp on tone changes which successfully and swiftly move the audience from laughter to stillness and contemplation. With his soft, gentle voice, this man could put me to sleep if he narrated a Headspace or Calm story (which, I promise, is a compliment).
Previously, Mike’s stand-ups took us through various phases of his life — a rare sleep disorder diagnosis (a nightmare for him), dating and marriage, and approaching fatherhood. Now, the comedian dives into slice-of-life stories of his 40s — health scares, attempts at exercise, parenthood, and reckoning with mortality. He takes us from doctors’ offices to an over-chlorinated YMCA pool; from his daughter’s bedroom to his parents’ home — all in animated fashion, as if recounted by a friend you haven’t met in years. One thing is clear: he is intent on presenting a passionate fight for life while talking about death.
If storytelling and comedy lie on different ends of a pool, Mike swims more (and faster) than he has in his entire life, probably — baring all as he performs a masterclass in meaningful comedic storytelling. His show is a fine balancing act: he finds moments of humour in serious topics, engaging both the head and the heart. Among other things, he brings self-deprecation to the table — making jokes at his own expense instead of punching down.
Middle-Age Crisis: Flawed, Fallible Bodies
The one-man show opens with a story of Mike, aged 44, attending an annual check-up. Through the course of the night, we hear about his conditions — Type 2 diabetes, a history of bladder cancer, and shortness of breath. As he discusses the check-up, he makes sure we find what happened to be as absurd as he did: his lung function test result was abysmal, which is a better way of putting it than the doctor did. The latter suggested Mike might have been experiencing a heart attack at that moment and was entirely unconvincing with an “I don’t think so” to follow this up.
Mike finds ways to inject humour into difficult subjects; he makes routine health procedures sound silly. This is how he describes a doctor drawing blood: “He took my blood, then I took his, it was sort of a sleepover theme.” One theme that sticks out, among others, is the way he engages with experts and authority figures. With each — from the doctor and cardiologist (Opinion Number 2) to Vanessa the ‘Director of Aquatics’ — he has amusing back-and-forths, questioning the need for the recommendations they gave, and ridiculously exaggerating the length of these conversations.
As he goes onto discuss his laughable lack of physical ability, he references moments from his childhood, too, including being “wrestled upon” (like “watching a paperweight be pinned by paper”). I’ve chosen to dub him as ‘B Team Bandit,’ following his dramatic story of bloodshed, courtesy a nose bleed he had “from the sheer nervousness of winning,” which led him to mistakenly think he killed someone. With his little quips like “That’s how I ended up here” and neatly lined up segues (“..so I explained this all to my cardiologist” after a laughably long story), the show is littered with moments coming full circle.
Birbiglia sets the scene as he discusses having to develop a swimming routine, too – since, in his own words, he doesn’t have a “swimmer’s body,” and “has almost a drowner’s body.” Highlighting his inadequacy, he adds, “I’ve never worn a Speedo — I wear sort of a speedless.” He goes on to describe the chlorine (and urine) in his local YMCA pool (“probably covering up some heinous crime”), and is also fixated on signs at the Y. These tell you stories of what went down there before, or feel like warnings for specific people. As he points out, signage like ‘slippery when wet’ and “no breath-holding” don’t exactly appear without a backstory.
As he narrates anecdotes about his encounters with the wild world of physical activity, his on-stage theatrics and re-enactments stand out: from pretend-wrestling and rolling onto his stomach to failing to complete a push-up and sliding down the pool backdrop. For a man who claims to be at odds with movement in general, his thoughts seem to always be bursting out of him, and he possesses a captivating energy as he makes full use of the stage around him, pacing from side to side.
We Came for the Laughs and Stayed for the Tenderness
To me, the heart of the show — and what ultimately made it most charming — is Mike’s relationship with his daughter. His daughter Oona’s bedroom, often as she falls asleep, serves as the setting for his most profound thoughts and turning points scattered across his journey. I would argue that fatherhood led him to contemplate his health and lifestyle with more immediacy than anything else. During the set, the pool backdrop occasionally had journal entries — in Mike’s scrawled handwriting — projected over it. As Mike speaks — suddenly quieter — these words appear on screen: “My dad had a heart attack when he was 56. His dad had a heart attack when he was 56, and today I realized, when I turn 56, Oona will be 19.” This was when he rose to action; it inspired his Brooklyn YMCA hero’s journey.
The mention of Oona promises to be tender and heartfelt: he describes how Oona said, “I love you dad,” which is a lot for the 44-year-old man who has come from a ‘Take Care’ instead of an ‘I Love You’ family. Recalling how Oona has a habit of replacing words with different ones when she doesn’t know them, he speaks of her reading aloud the title of a book on days of the week as “the days…of us.” He softly added, “And I thought that’s better,” which brings us back to the emotional core of the show.
While he moves us, he doesn’t forget to make us laugh — Mike has a special way of sprinkling in call-backs or cleverly coined phrases out of nowhere (“Christmas Parmesan” comes to mind). He knows exactly how to make everything feel personal and familiar — like we’re all in on an inside joke.
Meditations on A Fleeting Life
Mike scatters his deepest, darkest, sinking fears throughout the set — with death being at the centre of it. “When I thought I was going to die, it just silenced me,” he says; it is a big deal for a man whose job is to talk. The hushed silence that he often leaves in the theatre feels like a main character more than once. The thing is — he’s almost saying, ‘Remember that you have to die,’ which was originally a Latin phrase (memento mori). At the heart of it, it’s a call to live fiercely, loudly, and with purpose. Mike Birbiglia seems to think so, too.
In between reckoning with his fear of mortality, he holds two pieces of advice particularly dear (among the hundreds of things his doctors must’ve told him). One, Oona telling him, “Remember to be silly.” Two, a quote by the late musician, Warren Zevon, who said, “Enjoy every sandwich.” He reminds us, “The old man is dead, and we’re all the old man — we will be if we’re lucky. All we’re promised is this moment right now, together.”
As he urges us to make the most of our fleeting lives, he doesn’t forget his usual style of making sure what goes around comes around. At one point in the show, he discusses an app (WeMo) he used to automatically get his bedroom lights to turn off. Once, he was wide awake when the lights suddenly went off. Suggesting the app should change its name to ‘WeNoMo,’ he recalls how this was the closest he got to experiencing his own death. He plants a thought of death as an abrupt, middle-of-a-sentence kind of thing, playing on certain fears we all have — and chooses to close the night in a similar fashion.
The Old Man and The Pool is really a tale of middle age that almost serves as a coming-of-age story. Mike likes to take us on a ride — full of highs and lows and sharp twists — only to drop us off where we got on, but irrevocably changed.
