★★★★☆It’s a gutsy move, booking in for a four-week West End run when your only previous London shows have been fleeting visits and a Soho run more than a decade ago. Yet there is a reason why The Old Man & the Pool, the latest monologue from the New York-based comic storyteller Mike Birbiglia, made it to Broadway last year. This quiet master of his craft combines big themes with intimate details garlanded with good jokes.
This makes him the easiest of company, however heavy his themes. Oh, it may take a short while to tune into him as he veers from talk of present-day heart worries to memories of childhood sporting failures. Birbiglia, 45, has a story to tell of why he
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