Tim Minchin - Orchestra Tour

“Nothing ruins comedy like arenas, that’s a well established fact. My ego is the only thing you can see clearly from the back”

Sings Tim Minchin beaming with Cheshire cat grin, but when you have the thundering support of a 55 piece orchestra it's easy to be cocky.

As the sound poured through the venue, beating and pulsating into the ears of a full house, I was aware that this wasn’t going to be like any other comedy tour I’d chortled through. Arenas have never been well suited to comedy; words can be lost in the vast emptiness that bands effortlessly fill and any intimacy that runs naturally through smaller venues is lost. Comedy especially, laughter is always more contagious when you’re sitting shoulder to shoulder with it.

Two standing ovations, endless rounds of encores and applause, it’s obvious that Tim Minchin knows how to charm an audience. Even though the majority of the audience are there because of their doting admiration, Tim is more than just a crowd pleaser. He does play up to his popular numbers, reeling them off with ease to hungry fans and clapping hands. However, the set up of the tour and the dusting of new material makes it feel refreshing, instead of a worn out, stagnant regurgitation of used gags.

Minchin is more than just a comic; he’s an intelligent satirist with a modest scientific understanding and secular outlook. His songs preach cuttingly into delicate subjects: romantic love, alternative medicine, prejudices, blind religious following and gingers. His edginess is enough to make the most liberal mind automatically curl up in tangible discomfort. There is an audible gasp as he holds up a copy of the Koran, asking if it is any more special than an edition of Harry Potter and guilty giggles as he rounds off endless expletives about the “mother f***ing pope”. 

In-between the trumpeting fanfares and explosions of sound he ambles through jokes in his own awkward style. To some people this can be uncomfortable to watch as Minchin plays the role of someone not entirely sure of himself. To me, it’s all part of his wondrous comedic touch. As he bursts to life, storming through complex scores with ease, carried away toes tingling the keyboard, jumping around the stage like the “rock n’ roll nerd”. Panting he questions how the foot prints ended up on the lid of the grand piano.    

The gig was fitting with the venue and with Tim himself. It’s what he does best, clearly after sprinkling his magic over the RSC’s Matilda. He’s a musical genius and can fill large venues with only a couple of bars. There’s worry that mixing comedy and music, especially classical music is a foreign concept to audiences.  It’s been dabbled in by Bill Bailey and Flight of the Concords who have both neatly stitched it into their acts but nothing like the size and extravagance of what Minchin has achieved.

Tim Minchin has truly become an “icon for the disenfranchised masses”.