Mike Birbiglia is a Nice Boy

One of the funniest & most successful stand-up comedians on the circuit

Mike Birbiglia is a nice boy. Quiet and unassuming. Doesn’t even look like he shaves yet, although I’m sure he does. If you didn’t know him to be a comedian, you’d expect him to be in the chess club, or helping little old ladies cross the street, or sitting dejectedly on the sidelines during Stairway to Heaven at the high school dance.

The truth is he is one of the funniest and most successful stand-up comedians on the circuit, and he’s putting the final touches on his new one-man show, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, and bringing it to Montreal on his way to Broadway.

Some Montrealers might already have seen the show this past summer at the Just For Laughs Festival. But in case you missed it, it’s coming back to the Gesu Theatre in the new year. And even if you didn’t, it’s the nature of the craft that it’s probably a different show by now, so you might want to check him out again.

His last one-man show, Sleepwalk With Me, was an off-Broadway hit, directed by actor Nathan Lane. This time he’d headed straight for the Great White Way. He’s got a TV special under his belt, titled after one of his best jokes, What I Should Have Said Was Nothing. He’s got two CD’s, Two Drink Mike and My Secret Public Journal Live, which was named a “Best Comedy Album of the Decade” by The Onion AV Club. And he recently put out a book, Sleepwalk With Me and Other Stories.

Birbiglia doesn’t swear. Well, not usually, anyway. So when he does drop the odd F-bomb for effect, the element of surprise pulls a bigger laugh out of you than you might have expected. “I wanna make my own sympathy cards,” he says in one memorable bit. “Like on the cover I’d put a duck-billed platypus playing checkers with an apple, and then you open it up and it says the world is f**ked up.” And that’s his one bad word in a 5 minute set. Other than that it’s all about family, his medical conditions, and relationship troubles. He’s almost like an Italian Woody Allen, in a way.

It’s safe to call Birbiglia a Just For Laughs veteran. It was at his 2002 appearance in the New Faces of Comedy segment where he was spotted by David Letterman’s people. Soon after he made his American television debut. Years later he would debut Sleepwalk With Me right here in Montreal.

My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend returns to Montreal’s Gesu Theatre January 6-8. Tickets at the Gesu and JFL box offices, 514-790-1245 or 514-845-2322; www.admission.com or www.hahaha.com.

Mike Birbiglia

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