Ready For This?

Tim Minchen

Madman Entertainment

R4 DVD

Tin Minchen is an innovative Australian comedian, musician and poet. He combines stand-up comedy, songs with a unique sense of style and social conscience. He is unusual in that he is a stridently “secular” comedian, sending up religious pretensions and proudly espousing a scientific and rationalist worldview. As he notes, while this may be acceptable in the UK and Australia, in the United States this is about as risky as making jokes about “fisting”.

Ready For This? is a new show which include a few old favourites such as Sarah, Canvas Bags and the ever popular “I Can Have A Darkside” but otherwise has all new material. The show opens with a bang, in Who Needs A Band? Minchen uses his own voice through a Synthesizer to create a myriad of instruments and literally become his own band. It is a flamboyant and expansive way to open a show. Soon he moves to the piano and offers some excellent new numbers including some powerful critiques of both superstition and religion. As Minchen has matured as an entertainer his focus on social issues especially science and religious has become more prominent. In these days of terrorism and fundamentalism, I believe that this makes his comedy not only relevant but quite unique. His humour does not just consist of ridicule or one-liners such as the amusing but limited anti-religious humour of Bill Maher, but offers informed and highly erudite discussions of evolution, science, sexuality, politics, feminism and related issues. His song “The Good Book” displays an extensive knowledge of theology and the shortfalls of the supposed morality found in the Bible while his discussions of creationism shows he knows the subject well. One of the highlights of the show in this regard is his “Nine Minute Beat Poem”, this is really quite an astounding piece of performance poetry, beautifully polished with jazz accompaniment, it offers a witty but erudite dialogue between an ill-informed new age hippy and a well educated secular humanist with a solid grounding in science. It is not only extremely amusing but expresses the shortfalls of assumptions made about “natural remedies” and “alternative health” and clearly outlines the scientific response to such fallacious thinking. It is not only rip-roaringly funny but educational and poetic as well, no mean feat !

Another powerful song is Taboo which explores the danger of user the “N-word” and while African-Americans may choose to reclaim it, it is the height of arrogance for whites to think they use it in a trendy and cavalier sort of way. It is a carefully worded song which later uses prejudice against “gingers” (Minchen has red hair) to help explore the issue in more depth. It is entertaining, informative and a biting piece of social satire.

There are also lots of personal reflections as well, such as a song to his wife Sarah and a fun number where he tries to balance his intellectual adherence to such high ideals as non objectification and feminism with his love of Boobies ! This playful ability to reflect on his own foibles always gives his shows a personal touch. This is continued in a Song For Phil Daoust, his raucous attack on a reviewer who gave him a vicious review when he started out in 2005 at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, it is so extreme (he wants to tear flesh off the reviewers face and feed it to his children) that it is incredibly amusing. I hope he likes this review!

Ready For This? is musically accomplished and includes reflections on all manner of subjects from the exploitation of bears (we really shouldn’t make them dance), to religion, science, the new age, feminism, sex and marriage. It really shows his development as a comedian that he can hold an audience for nearly two hours with nothing more than himself, a piano and some accessories such as a smoke machine. The show did not falter once and I found myself wanting more, it ended with a nicely reflective number about a sentimental but secular celebration of Christmas. Bravo Tim !

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This review will appear in Volume 2 No.5 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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