Tim Minchin: Songs the World Will Never Hear – Eventim Apollo

Tim Minchin: Songs the World Will Never Hear was reviewed at the Eventim Apollo, London. The tour continues until 20 July 2025.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Since his return to touring in 2019, after the highs and complications of West End success (Matilda, Groundhog Day), there has been a strange tension in Tim Minchin’s work. He speaks to it himself onstage; the comedy for which he became very rapidly famous 15 years ago has never been, in his own mind, his primary artform. Since then, he explains, he has been leveraging that profile to generate opportunities doing those other things (in music, theatre, and on screen) which he hadn’t been able to break into or make liveable in his early career.

This show trails an album of songs written long ago and revised for proper debut (to be released on 25 July) and takes the form of a retrospective. Minchin tells his audience that he will likely fail to talk less in this show, but that this is a less talky show, nonetheless. And I am hard pressed to be sure whether the package overall is better for it.

There is something here for all kinds of fans, guaranteed by the retrospective structure, covering work from across a now lengthy career. The introduction of Matilda’s ‘Revolting Children’ is a knee-drumming, fist-pumping highlight, as is the number from Groundhog Day – a quietly beautiful song in its own right. These are probably also the moments that newcomers will feel most at home with.

Long-time followers will delight in familiar but less-played favourites, and those experiencing these old hits fresh will, I think, find just as much wit and insight as when they were new. If I have a reservation, it’s only that perhaps there is some better material in the back catalogue of songs from old shows to resurrect.

I would guess that the chosen numbers speak to the numerous avenues and artforms Minchin has experimented in, but in a few cases, it feels as if he has selected the second or third funniest, cleverest, or most beautiful song.

To analogise in the parlance of mathematical averages (which does feel very Minchin), the mean average here is very strong, but the modal average isn’t quite as high as it has been in shows past – for my taste, at least.

Tom Martland