Rachel Parris on Tim Minchin: ‘Man, he can play that piano!’

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/apr/08/comedy-heroes-rachel-parris-on-tim-minchin

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The first time I saw Tim Minchin live, it was his 2008 show Ready for This? in a very big room at the Pleasance during the Edinburgh fringe. I was not a comedian at that time, just a jobbing pianist and arts administrator (the glamour!), and watched the show with an open-minded easiness that I only wish I could retain for watching fellow comics now. He was playing on a grand piano and the show was sold out, and I remember naively thinking at the time, “wow, this guy has hit the top”, not imagining the orchestral arena tours that would follow, or everything else he did after creating these hilarious, satirical, sometimes tear-jerking songs. I started writing my own comedy songs shortly after, with a straggly-haired Aussie on the brain.

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Man, he could play. His fingers danced around that piano, sometimes giving it a heavy blues pounding, sometimes a delicate ballad or a nimble jazz flourish, but always beautifully articulate and with care – I haven’t seen a musical comedian who seemed so in to his instrument. It is addictive to watch. I love his songwriting. It is easy to misunderstand what a comedy song is, or what its potential is. I’m used to musical comedy being maligned as an easy artform. It’s not just writing jokes and then singing them, although that’s an option for some – whatever works for you. For me, the best comedy songs are the ones that use the craft of songwriting; that wrap the lyrics (not just words) around the melody, and use the minutiae of composing, to create the comedy. That’s what Minchin is so good at – it’s not just jokes with a guitar underscore. (Stewart Lee has a good bit about the value of tuning a guitar over a punchline.) The songs are not two-chord ditties: he has spent time writing them, and performs them with the skill of a pro musician (which Minchin was).

What has most stayed with me from that first performance was that a show should have light and shade. Minchin’s songs and patter vary from broad, belly-laugh songs about loving boobs, to vicious, biting critiques of organised religion. Then he makes you cry like a baby with a sentimental, beautiful love song to his kids. You’re a chortling, weeping mess by the end – it’s a rollercoaster.

No surprise then, that he transitioned so well to writing musical theatre. I saw Matilda three times, and would gladly keep going until I start getting funny looks from the parents. Just like in his solo set, it is clever comedy – Minchin revels in hidden jokes, wordplay, lyrical and rhythmic subtleties, but without alienating his audience – which, for Matilda, is mostly children, so that’s quite a feat.

Minchin is what I aspire to be – funny, smart, silly, skilled and likable. He’s so bloody likable – how can you not love a wild-eyed, ginger, barefoot Aussie at a piano? But he’s also astute and, at times, brutal. When he hosted the comedy proms in 2011, he opened the show in character as a greying, conservative concertgoer, exclaiming: “Is nothing sacred any more?!” He’s right – it’s not. Anything is fair game in comedy, and Minchin knows it.

• Rachel Parris: Live in Vegas is at Soho theatre, London, 27-29 April.