An Unfunny Evening With Tim Minchin

Tim Minchin is back in town! It’s been a while since we last saw him – 2019, in fact – so of course we had to go and see him again. Tim Minchin’s appeal does appear to be a bit patchy…obviously, we’re fans, but when my barber asked what I was up to and I mentioned going to see him, he’d never heard of him. Similarly, when I bumped into a Zealandia colleague in town who enquired what we were going to see, again it was “who he?” Both of these are young persons, so maybe it’s a generational thang. As is saying “thang”.

 I’d wanted to go to Koji for dinner, but they had no availability so we ended up back at Rosella again, which we’d enjoyed last time we went there. There’s been no change, but we did manage to select some different menu items this time (although I still had oysters to start). Then it was a short walk  up Courtenay Place to St James Theatre for the show. 

Waiting for Timot

Tim Minchin is known for his humorous songs. As he explained at the beginning, he hadn’t set out to be a comedian, and had started out in a band with his brother, before becoming more comedy-based, and also taking up acting. So tonight’s show was not going to be his usual comedy routines and songs, but a selection of songs, old and new, with various levels of sincerity, pathos, and bathos…including some from his musicals, Matilda and Groundhog Day. Did you know he was responsible for those? He’s a man of many talents. He did warn us in advance about how sincere each song was, giving us a value on a scale of one to ten. So this was a set of unfunny songs, punctuated, as usual, by Tim’s musings and ramblings on any number of subjects, his acting career, the background to the songs, and anything that popped into his head, really.

On the poster and other publicity materials it does say that “artist may inadvertently amuse”. This is a lie. The amusement was definitely advertent. And amusing it was, too, as the evening ran on, finally ending up almost half an hour longer than the advertised run time. No, I’m not complaining. It was a great fun evening, and if it comes anywhere near you, you should go and see it.