Mike Birbiglia’s One-Man Broadway Show ‘The New One’ Is Heading To Netflix
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ComedianMike Birbigliastarted performing his one-man showThe New Oneon Broadway last year, and he’s been touring the country with the show for a while now. But if you haven’t been lucky enough to catch his deeply personal and truly unique act, you’ll have a couple more chances to do so. Seeing it on stage might be a little challenging, but soon enough, you’ll be able to see it from the comfort of your couch.
Mike Birbiglia: The New Onewill be coming to Netflix next month, just in time to enjoy it with your whole family around Thanksgiving. However, if you’re in the Los Angeles area, you’ll have one month to catch the show on stage for the last time in front of a live audience.Deadlinehas word thatMike Birbiglia: The New Onewill arrive on Netflix onNovember 26, 2019as the comedian’s latest stand-up special. But let me tell you, this show is so much more than just your average stand-up special. While most stand-up specials today are mostly a collection of assorted observations and bits inspired by real life, Birbiglia’s show has a full-fledged narrative, and it comes from some of the most personal parts of his life.
In case you didn’t know, Mike Birbiglia lives with a dangerous habit of sleepwalking. It’s something he chronicled in another one-man Broadway show calledSleepwalk with Me, which wasalso the title of a memoirabout his experiences, and was also adaptedinto an indie comedythat played at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. His sleepwalking is so serious that he’snearly killed himself in the process, one time jumping out of a second story hotel room window because he thought he was going to be hit by a missile.
This is important because inThe New One, Birbiglia wonders if he wants to bring a child into the world knowing that his condition creates a huge risk for the prospective offspring that would be living just down the hall from him. The result is something that is touching, confessional, and, of course, hilarious. Having seen the show live in 2017 when it was simply his new stand-up special and hadn’t yet come to Broadway, I’m excited to see what changes he’s made toThe New Oneonce it hits Netflix. Here’s what I wrote after seeing the showin the fall of 2017:
This time, Birbiglia takes us on his personal journey from never wanting kids, even after he married his wife, to becoming a father. Still plagued by his sleepwalking disorder, his life thrown into upheaval due to a combination of his comedy career not meshing well with the responsibility of having a newborn baby, and struggling with drastic changes in his life that he wasn’t prepared for, Birbiglia’s account of becoming a father is all at once gut-bustlingly funny and incredibly charming.
If you’d like to catchThe New Oneon stage, you may see it at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles fromOctober 23throughNovember 24(tickets are available now). This will be the last time Birbiglia performs the show for a live audience. Then the Netflix special, which was film at Broadway’s Cort Theater, will arrive on November 26. And the good news is that this is the kind of comedy special you can watch with your family, because Birbiglia never gets too raunchy. Enjoy!
