"Better glance up every five seconds," says compere Dan Atkinson. In a big top in the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College, an overhead cable has fallen into the audience. "Is anyone dead?" I'm happy to report the audience is alive and well, and no one dies on stage either, on this impressive opening night (rigging notwithstanding) of the Greenwich comedy festival. The big draw is Tim Minchin, taking a break from arena comedy and smash-hit musical theatre to deliver a consummate, commanding performance at the top of the bill.
There's nothing wrong with the acts that precede him: Dan Antopolski cracking literate gags in a game of cat and mouse with the audience's indulgence; Holly Walsh with a tight observational set; and best of all, Tim Key, whose poem about Hitler's dress sense is fabulously unexpected. But Minchin operates on a different register. He's several entertainers in one: a brilliant pianist, an affectless standup comic, a lyricist of intoxicating flair, and – as if that weren't enough – a man with important, inspiring things to say about the world.
He plays a few old favourites tonight, including his signature track Rock'n'Roll Nerd. My own highlights included the more recent Lullaby, a broken-spirited hymn to sleepless babies everywhere ("Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird/ In the hope you get avian flu"). And his song Cont/Context, which begins "I don't like Jews", is a mini-masterpiece. What starts as a have-cake-and-eat-it nugget of teasingly "ironic" bigotry is revealed ("I had half the lyrics covered up") as a gleeful attack on the same. But the joke doesn't stop with the surprise; Minchin keeps renewing, refreshing and subverting it with each line. This is comedy that sets itself, and meets, an exhilaratingly high standard.
