"It’s all very, very funny... baked to golden perfection."

The New York Times

"A show that’s about swimming and making people laugh about bodies, but it’s mostly about our need to laugh about death. And it’s beautiful: exquisitely written, performed and designed, with all of Birbiglia’s characteristic ear for tone and rhythm... All anecdotes and metaphors click neatly into one another; all the stories build and coalesce and flow from one event to the next."

Vulture

"A rumination on severe obstacles which ought not be funny but, in the author’s telling, are positively side-splitting."

New York Stage Reviews

"A tight, perfectly constructed 85 minutes... a very real insight into mortality, health and the fragility of life – and, most poignantly, the tenuousness of our connections to those we love."

Deadline

"Delightful... Birbiglia doesn’t bend toward sentimentality. When it comes to matters of the heart, poetic and cardiovascular, he simply suggests chains of family history can be broken."

New York Theatre Guide

"The latest Mike check-up, the funny and endearing The Old Man and the Pool, dives back into questions of life and death, delivered with a goofy gallows grin that helps the medicine go down."

Time Out NY

"Resoundingly entertaining... a downright pleasurable evening... just what the doctor ordered."

Talkin' Broadway