Tim MInchin: Ready For This?

Tim Minchin is, by now, somewhat of a rock star. And what goes better with rock stars than nostalgia? Well, here’s a big dose of it: Minchin’s show this year, Ready for This?, just isn’t a spot on his past Fringe showings.

In one sense this is a little unfair: any other performer throwing off a performance like this would be, quite rightly, lavished with praise. And one can’t speak highly enough of Minchin’s piano work, which can move from jaunty, singable chord progressions into wildly flamboyant jazz or blues stylings in the space of a punchline. And there really are some good ones of those, too. A song about “the power of language” sings tragically of the ills of a word with “a couple of ‘g’s, an ‘r’ and an ‘e’, an ‘i’ and an ‘n’.” But this isn’t, in fact, about “nigger” at all, but another problem of social exclusion which comes much less expected – and far more amenable to amusing rhymes. But while this is very funny when it arrives, in truth one has already been scrabbling around for anagrams for several minutes beforehand. Another song, an R&B spoof dedicated to his wife entitled ‘If I didn’t have you...someone else would do’, manages that off-kilter twist that Minchin does so well. But such wonderful moments rarely occur.

Perhaps this year charts a creep into more serious territory: Minchin’s targets are slightly more contentious—he really does throw the book at religion—and he hits it with more vigour. A 10 minute beat poem cum diatribe about the anti-science stance of some hippie types, set against a sultry, foreboding jazz groove is perhaps the way forward for the Australian now. And what an exciting direction it looks to be. But whether there are just too few songs in a set broken up by Minchin’s less successful stand up, or whether it is that the songs themselves aren’t up to scratch, not even the presence of a breakdancing bear can lift this show to excitement of former glory years.