Not many comedians start their set by saying that their father recently suffered a severe stroke. Then again, there aren’t that many stand-up guys like Mike Birbiglia. In his films, Netflix specials, and live performances, he has always worked hard to not only make audiences laugh, but also create emotional moments.
That trend continues at the State Theater on Saturday, as she attempts to forge a connection with both her sick father, who struggles to express his emotions, and his 9-year-old daughter, who has reached an age where expressing emotions is difficult. All the shows were on. impress.
The show tells the story of how his father once gave him a Curious George doll, one of the few moments of tenderness the two shared, and how he and his wife of 16 years played the game. It was full of sentimental stories, including worries about how to explain the concept. War on your own children. But Birbiglia’s willingness to show his sensitive side doesn’t prevent him from going dark.
He joked that he wished his father had suffered the stroke sooner.
“Jesus was the first person to have a martyr complex,” said the 46-year-old comedian, wearing dark jeans and layers of casual shirts. “My father was second.”
Religion was the subject of much of the crude humor, even as he told the story of how he was chosen as one of the comedians to have an audience with Pope Francis earlier this year.
Birbiglia seemed to struggle at times to fill his entire 80-minute set with family themes. Or maybe he thought the audience needed some breathing room between the heavy songs. In each case, there was an interesting anecdote about graduating from the DARE program in the 1980s and the rise in coffee prices. It’s a witty joke, but at times it felt like a filler.
At one point, he veered into political humor, scolding senators who don’t resign when they should. Later he said that his father preferred that kind of material.
