Tim Minchin VS The MSO

Great to have Tim Minchin back in town! Both the Orchestra and Minchin were in fine form through the night making music comedy together and dealing with hecklers too. Orchestral musical jokes with Minchin's patter at the beginning of the night and were a good start.

From there, after the introduction of the Orchestra, Minchin seemed to pretty much ignore them and get on with his show of stand up and great music that just happened to have a full orchestra behind him. He'd covered this approach in the quip viz "I've always deserved an orchestra, ah here's one", but the lack of blending the musical genres or even setting eachother up in a comic Minchin VS the MSO situation or other kind of meeting of minds was lacking and needed a bit more thinking through.



I understand that we need to hear Minchin's amazing piano skills and machine-gun-hammered-Tom-Lehrer-meets-Gilbert-and-Sullivan-and-Dr-Seuss- pentameter. Make no mistake, that's what we were there for. We got every word and every note and laughed our way through. But the awkward sound balance meant the orchestra's fabulous arrangements (and they were!) faded mostly into obscurity and were overpowered by both piano and rock band. At interval my friend said "I wonder why the orchestra is there?". I was crestfallen. Perhaps I was very aware of the lack of unity-of-purpose and the imbalanced sound after seeing the MSO with Sting a few weeks ago where the raison d'orchestra was superbly rendered both musically and thematically. In that instance there was simply one musical group on stage. I later heard there were complaints but the sound was also excellent from where I was at the music bowl.

The balance was better in the second half. On the lullaby and the encore the orchestra was taken full advantage of blending and creating depth and dimension around Minchin's magical music and bitter-sweet lyrics. FINALLY! Huzzaah!! MORE OF THAT!! For me there was a real breakthrough moment. By the Saturday the forgetting of Lyrics was forgotten (as seemed to happen Friday night), but Minchins slightly awkward self awareness and "trying too hard" banter was a little distracting. Relax into it a bit and he'd be simply virtuosic. With more thought and development as to why there all there, this could be an amazing show. I look forward to the next one.