Thank You God

With the Heritage Orchestra

More Tim Minchin videos

Composer, actor and pianist Tim Minchin lept into the British comedy scene in 2005, with his Perrier-best-newcomer-winning Edinburgh show Dark Side.

It was a show he had debuted at the Sydney Big Laugh Comedy Festival earlier that year, and performed to critical acclaim at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, where it won the Festival Directors' Award.

His follow-up show, So Rock, was nominated for the Barry award for the most outstanding show in his native Melbourne in 2006 before returning to Edinburgh. That year he also appeared at the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal.

He performed his first show, Navel, in Australia in 2003 and was a Victoria state finalist in the Raw competition for new comedians the following year.

As an actor, he has played Amadeus in Peter Schaffer's play, and Hamlet, both for the Perth Theatre Company, and has appeared with the Australian Shakespeare Company.

Winner of the best music and variety act at the Chortle awards in 2009, 2010 and 2011, where his show with a full orchestra was also named best tour.

In 2010, he wrote the music for the Royal Shakespeare Company's adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda.

Greenwich Comedy Festival: Tim Minchin etc
Live Review
Old Royal Naval College

There are few better ways to get a party started than with Tim Minchin, so what perfect choice to kick off the third Greenwich Comedy Festival, another week of top-drawer comics in the glorious and historic Old Royal Naval College.

There were, however, a few teething problems with the 1,800-seater marquee. The gig was half an hour late starting, Minchin's radio mic gave up the ghost midway through his first song, and some lighting cable came untethered and fell (harmlessly) on to the audience. Such drama.

Luckily compere Dan Atkinson guided us nimbly through such palavers. He has something of a chaotic demeanour himself, but is surprisingly, and reassuringly, controlled with it. In a similarly contradictory manner, he's quirkily idiosyncratic, but easily to relate to – at least if you’re not a primary school teacher, an occupation he has tremendous fun baiting. A couple of his left-field lines are near the knuckle, but always delivered with a cheeky glint that makes them instantly forgivable.

Festival bookers didn’t look too far from Atkinson on the A-Z list of comedians for opening act Dan Antopolski, who was visibly put on the back foot by the size of the audience, and admitted as much. Still, being in awe of the crowd rather suits his man-child persona: awkward, hesitant and clad in awful knitwear. His set was faltering, not quite building momentum, even though his impressively agile wordplay drew sold laughs – even if you also grimace through some of the more torturous examples. His quiet, eager-to-please charm goes a long way, too.

After the first interval, sublime anti-poet Tim Key delivered an all-too short set of his finest work, applying decidedly un-poetic language to mundane situations, and creating fragments of hilarious beauty because of it. His ‘harrowing’ war verse, with its blindsiding punchline deserves special mention, but his unique style of writing and delivery, part-naturalistic, part-affected, was as richly rewarding as ever.

Holly Walsh got a good reception, too, playing up her South East London connection as a resident of nearby Peckham, rough but battling valiantly to gentrify. Her nuggets of personal observations are of variable quality, with the best conjuring up moments of strange embarrassment, but she delivers with such enthusiasm and emphasis as to win the crowd over. She even gets laughs out of two very similar payoffs about pregnancy testing kits, even though, in theory, the routines should have been much further apart.

After a second interval, the man everyone came to see, Tim Minchin, with some greatest hits including Rock And Roll Nerd, Prejudice and the awesome Pope Song – although muted call-and-response sections seemed to suggest this crowd weren’t entirely au fait with the barefooted Australian’s back catalogue.

There were, too, a couple of more recent numbers, including the unflinchingly honest, if creepily unpalatable, lullaby to his daughter; plus daring Cont which pushed to the limit the audience’s confidence in his motives, before the silly reveal.

Impressive musicality aside, Minchin’s chief skill is the depths to which he will drag the audience down some apparently serious path, delivering with such apparently earnest, heartfelt emotion that natural cynicism is demolished, before he release the comedy pay-off to now devastating effect.

His stand-up matches the skill of the songs, too, with some A-grade material about ‘guilty pleasures’ or a trip to the barber’s, while his army of nerd followers are not neglected with some cheekily geeky discussion about the statistical measure known as the p-value.

This was a rare back-to-basics gig for Minchin – if you can call any set which involves a grand piano ‘basic’. But away from the arenas and full orchestra back-up, he delivered as funny, thoughtful and barnstormingly powerful performance as ever. It was an impressive start to an impressive festival.

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Yes great to see Tim in intimate venue, just him and piano like it used to be. Love the band, but also solo. The 16-year-old was not embarrassed, nor her parents -- all big fans.

MsJinnifer, February 2013

Saw TM for second time at Beautiful Days this weekend, one of the most gifted and brilliant performers I have ever seen, who also happens to be extremely funny.

carmellaj, August 2011

That's the trouble with people called Mandy, they just don't do irony ....

Cathy, February 2011

@vicky... um what? guess I'm not 'intelectual' enough...

Dave, March 2010

An utter pleasure to watch perform and a delightfully down to earth person. Eagerly awaiting his interpretation of Matilda to hit the west end.

vicky, February 2010

I would advise this Art School Stilgoe to revise his sixth-form debater-informed 'Storm Movie' poetry - too preachy for his target crowd of rebounding Brand-ettes and too ill-informed and twitterati-driven to draw any intelectual audience worth its salt.

Mandy Allan, January 2010

I saw Tim at the Glasgow Pavilion. Wow what a night.

Helena, October 2009

You just can’t fault this guy. Saw his ‘Ready for this’ tour in Cambridge and was utterly brilliant. I bought his CD and listen too it regularly and you really start to appreciate all the ironies. All round good fun, sort off bloke if you met in a bar you would be entertained for hours just listening to him rant! Top class!!

Tim, October 2009

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