Comedy Fun Times (Minchin/Burnham duet show, the first)

With just 1 month to go before the Edinburgh Festival, I thought it’d be a good idea to drop everything and spend some time at the Toronto and Montreal comedy festivals. I started off last night seeing the Tim Minchin & Bo Burnham ‘duets’ show (which I’m seeing again tonight... which is why I must blog today so I don’t mash them up... shut up. Stop judging me!).

The audience was an interesting mix of people there to see Tim and people there to see Bo. That’s kind of a weird feeling to start with (especially) as I was sitting behind a table of girls who shrieked and squealed when they saw Bo WALK INTO THE VENUE. I have no time for these people... Anyways, I was lucky enough to find some cool people who I hung out with for the evening and shared a table with.

Bo was introduced by a suspiciously Australian man backstage and kicked off the show. I’m not a massive connoisseur of Bo’s work, but I did see his show at the same venue last year, and there was no repetition. As he’s doing an Edinburgh show this year, I’m hardly surprised. I find it very hard to describe Bo’s stuff since he always seems to be speaking/rapping so fast that you have to focus on the words otherwise you’ll miss it. All I will say is this, his stuff was excellent, beautifully nerdy and incredibly fast-paced. I liked his half far more than I was expecting and if you get a chance to see him in Edinburgh, or on tour, do it! I’m looking forward to his Edinburgh show even more now!

At the end of Bo’s set, Tim came out on stage and the two bantered for a while. It was clear that they were trying to out-do each other, but both seemed to be loving it. I think that Tim was at a massive disadvantage, cos, as he said, he’d just flown in from London at 5am, spent the day doing sound checks and then done 3 shows (of which this was his last). It was nearing midnight by the time he got on stage, which was 5am in his jet-lagged head. Either way, he held his own and the pair just sort of messed around (clearly this hadn’t been rehearsed) on stage for a while.

After that, Tim was left to his own devices on a really terrible electric keyboard. Bo had used it as well, but that’s more his style. We spoke about this after the show yesterday and he wasn’t happy, but apparantly there will be a proper piano delivered for tonight’s show. Tim spent a fair amount of his set talking to a man with ‘trust me I’m a doctor’ (the lying cunt) written on his t-shirt and his friend who looked like Philip Seymour Hoffman ‘with the talent bred out’. His first song was the Pope song. I’ve only seen the youtube video, but it’s very interesting live! I emphasise again that the electric keyboard was shit, but on a proper piano (like tonight) it will sound awesome. I was wondering how he was going to make up for the feel of the oompah band, and I think he’s done it (to be confirmed after a proper piano is acquired). Then more banter with the ‘doctor’, who we discovered was not a doctor, and has 2 degrees but wouldn’t tell us which. Then Tim didn’t know what song to play next, so made us sing a little song while he ran to get his set list (up the stairs that were on stage). He promptly ditched the set list and just asked for requests. I yelled ‘You Grew on Me’ and got my wish. I fucking love that song. Once again, shit piano, great song! When he started the opening bars, my eyes started tearing up. I’ve not heard that live before. After some more crowd banter, Tim sang his last song, ‘If you Really Loved Me’ to a girl in the front row who was very impressed. Beautiful.

After the show, my table and I stuck around to meet Tim and Bo. The girls I was sitting with had driven 9 hours from the USA to see this show, so they wanted to say hi to Tim. Despite being massively tired, Tim stuck around and had a chat with us, and the table containing the ‘doctor’ and Bo signed autographs and had pictures taken. Tim wasn’t happy about the lack of a piano, but was really lovely. I managed to tell him that I was an Angry-Feeter, and we talked a little about Linzy and Kirsty (I should’ve brought a Kinder Egg... I might tonight), Jamie Kilstein also came up in conversation. It was great! I also managed to have a chat with Bo, where I mentioned that I’d be seeing his Edinburgh show. I wasn’t aware that he’d never done an Edinburgh show before. I’m guessing he’ll walk the ‘Best Newcomer’ award.

Oh right, and then we did this:

Jealous? X

It’s an amazing start to my summer of comedy! It’ll be hard to top this, but I’ll try my best!