Tim Minchin – Ready For This?
Tim Minchin, musical comedian or comic musician, is working in the biggest room at The Pleasance because the Gilded Balloon doesn’t have a room big enough to hold him. The theatre (normally a sports hall), was packed, the front row was a line up of women and girls with cameras in hand and the expectation was building up excitement. Tim began with the huge wow-factor number to perfectly meet this enthusiasm and to establish his status of rock star he never thought he’d be. It was a loud Techno number, ‘Are you Ready for this?’ Yes indeed we are Tim.
There probably wasn’t another person in the room coming to the show with the same insight that I had. I was fortunate enough to catch the world premier of “Rock and Roll Nerd”, the documentary of the rise to fame of Tim Minchin at the Melbourne Film Festival the night before I left for the UK. A stunningly intimate and informative film that I recommend to all comedy fans and Fringe festival performers/hopefuls. A lot of Tim’s trials and tribulations are set out in the film including being devastated by a single nasty Fringe review, being attacked for ironically using the word ‘nigger’ in a song and so on. His American tour was not covered in the film, but it’s fairly obvious that he was attacked by religious fundamentalists for his anti-religious stance. How? Well I think this show instead of being called ‘Ready for this’ should have been titled “Revenge of the Rock & Roll Nerd”.
His songs nearly all seemed to be directly avenging being treated badly by others. The first and best, ‘Taboo’, a killer satire on bigotry and the use of cruel, bullying words that also had a surprising, endearingly sweet twist. After his attack on fundamental religious zealots, ‘Good Book’, several people left the room, Tim trying to appear non plussed said “Yeah she’s got her coat, they’re walkers. I had about 6 leave last night too. Fuck ‘em.” This show was quite angry at times. He performed a nine minute beat poem about a hippy girl who annoyed him at a party with her diatribe about alternative medicines and his canvas bag song has been replaced with a plea to save dancing bears. He had planned a dancer in a bear suit to perform, but the dancer was in a car accident and had to be replaced by the stage manager at the last minute with hilarious results.
His angriest song, which was on the edge of self indulgent but so gleefully entertaining that you forgave him, was a song about that one bad review he got for his award winning show at his 1st Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He rather frighteningly (and lawsuit inducingly) named the critic and the newspaper involved and spat out copious unashamed vitriol. In the song. I couldn’t help but wonder if Tim had not quite realised why we all fell in love with him three years ago. Not just his ability to make us laugh but the bittersweet sadness, the hope, the courage of not giving up his dream despite being unashamedly normal, with his lack of a dark side, his boring lovely relationship with his wife. This show proved he does have a dark side, but don’t we all? Still, is this angry Tim the one we looked forward to seeing tonight?
The audience called out requests and he said “but this is an all NEW show”. Fair enough, but I hope he doesn’t give up playing the old favourites altogether. He may be sick of them, but we haven’t heard them often enough. A very entertaining show none the less, the hour whizzed by much too quickly. Tim is a master showman and easily commanded the huge room, check him out if you can get a ticket.
Visit the Fringe Website for booking details.