So Saturday night was the Mike Birbiglia show, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, at the Brown Theatre downtown. If you read my review last week then you know that I had never seen a full show by the guy before, but was optimistic from the things I had heard about him. Well, I wouldn't say that I was disappointed as much as maybe I had set my expectations too high.
Birbiglia comes out and makes some small talk with the audience, cracking a few jokes along the way, and right off the bat I can tell that the volume on the speakers is too low for a majority of the theatre to hear him well if there is any sort of minor chuckling going on. Luckily there was a gentleman who wasn't afraid to let this be known as he shouted out "turn it up!". This guy was my hero of the evening, and after several attempts by the sound guys, Mike's voice could somewhat be heard over laughter.
As it turned out, the show was a story of how Mike met his wife, and how things that had happened to him when he was younger, and first venturing out into discovering girls, were oddly similar to things that he experienced while dating his future bride. To me the show just wasn't what I would consider "LOL" funny, it was more "chuckle" funny. You know, how when someone says something that you think is humorous or is a keen observation but isn't really worthy of a gut busting laugh. I think that's what I was expecting, and I kept waiting for him to say something that would catch me off guard and make me lose it, but it never really happened. Since the entire subject was discovering what love is it actually felt more like watching a rehearsed play than a comedy show. Mike Birbiglia is a funny guy and. if given the opportunity I'd probably go see him again, I'm just know that I wouldn't want to see this show more than once. To me that is the sign of a good show, good movie, good meal, etc.. when you want to experience it again; this show was just OK to me, not almost two hours I'd want to repeat.
