Mike Birbiglia's The New One comes to Broadway!
Mike Birbiglia has a new one. It's called The New One. He's made you laugh in Sleepwalk with Me (it was a play presented by Nathan Lane, then a movie, THEN a book), My Girlfriend's Boyfriend and Thank God for Jokes. (He was also really funny in that one season of Orange Is the New Black. And in Billions. And Broad City.) Now he's on Broadway telling a new story in a new way with the same heart and humor we've come to expect. Lin-Manuel Miranda called The New One "as perfect a night as you're gonna get." Do not miss The New One. Some people say it's his best one. (It was John Mulaney. Also, Vogue.)
On Broadway for 12 weeks (99 performances!) only.
There will be no spoilers here about how all this works out, but the tone and pitch of the comedy changes dramatically toward the end of the 90 minutes. It has to; one of Birbiglia's final revelations is that his new life means he now laughs in a new way himself. You think you could stay there even longer. Birbiglia is the kind of ribald, engaging storyteller you never want to stop.
The emotional heart of The New One, though, beats loudest after the actual new one arrives, and Birbiglia's physical isolation becomes a metaphor for his emotional distance from mother and daughter. To say he's not particularly good at sharing or dealing with isolation is an understatement, and leads to one of the play's two most startling moments (the one that's not the before & after visual change-up, which, again, I won't spoil except to applaud set designer Beowulf Boritt).
2018 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway Production at Cherry Lane Theatre Off-Broadway |
2018 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2019 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Solo Performance | Mike Birbiglia |
2019 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Solo Performance | Mike Birbiglia |
Videos