As opening night in the West End approaches Tim talks about the recently released cast recording and the preparations for the move:
Tell us about the cast recording.
Tim, Kerry, Adrianna and Josie (Original production cast from Stratford-upon-Avon November 2010)
Early on, there was debate about whether or not to release a live recording of the Stratford show. I was strongly in favour of holding out for the studio. A cast recording is an opportunity to create an independent piece of work. In the live show, there is so much going on at all times that an audience can’t possibly take in every lyric and every nuance of the orchestrations etc. In making the album, I wanted to make sure we could record and mix it to an extremely high standard so that there was a pure record of the songs.
It took a couple of weeks, in May, to record at Air studios in Highgate. It is an incredible place that was started by George Martin. It was recorded and mixed by the lovely sound engineer Rupert Coulson, and produced by the great Chris Nightingale. I rocked into the studio for three days in the week before I went to the US. I tweaked the structure of a couple of songs, did an arrangement of ‘When I Grow Up’ which will become the curtain call reprise, and put my nose in where it wasn’t needed every now and then. It was incredibly fun.
Yes! It’s the long-awaited, long-clamoured for announcement that Tim will finally be releasing a DVD in that popular NTSC, region 1 format!
On the 27th September, you will be able to get your paws on a US-exclusive version of ‘Ready For This?’ from all good DVD retailers, online from the usual places (you know, like Amazon, Tower Records, Best Buy, etc) and at his forthcoming US gigs!
The DVD features the same show that was released in the UK last year, recorded in 2009 at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, with costumes, flashy lights, explosive pyrotechnics and a nice, shiny piano. Also, as if that wasn’t enough, you guys are super-lucky and will be among the first to own the animated Storm movie on DVD, as it’s been included as an extra!
The fun doesn’t stop there as there will be an additional sparkly* bonus CD of ‘Ready For This?’ as recorded at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 2008, with a full band and a string section!
For those who are still unsure about the whole thing, or who simply want their appetites whetted, here’s a sneaky preview in the form of Confessions.
Finally, for those wondering about what’s happening with Tim’s stuff on iTunes, we can confirm that the ‘Ready For This?’ album will be available on there soon!
Tim will have to pack his extra strength hairspray with maximum hold to stop that wind messing up his hair… and brows when he returns to perform for you in November.
Chicago, IL
Vic Theatre
Thursday, 10th November 2011 8pm Tickets go on sale Saturday September 17th at 10am
It is a fully seated show and general admission so you’ll get more choice of where to sit the earlier you arrive. There will be no opening acts so Tim will be on stage at 8pm. Don’t be late!
Tim’s bringing his ass* to town! He’ll be performing two shows in beautiful Galway on the West Coast of Ireland as part of the Galway Comedy Festival.
Galway
The Radisson Live Lounge
Friday 28th and Saturday 29th October 2011 at at 8pm. Tickets are priced at €25 and go on sale 9am on Friday 16th September.
The festival, which runs from the 26th – 31st October 2011, has an amazing line up of top international comedians and many varied events including a Donkey Derby*. Yes really! Full details of which can be found on the Galway Comedy Festival website and I believe it’s a Bank Holiday weekend in Ireland so plenty of time for fun.
Happy Roald Dahl Day, to you! To celebrate what would have been the great author’s 95th birthday, we’ve got, not one, not two but THREE pieces of exciting Matilda news!
Cast Recording
First off, today marks the release of the official cast recording on CD! The album was recorded with the original cast from the Stratford-upon-Avon run and will feature seventeen wonderful songs, as penned by our Tim, including ‘When I Grow Up’, ‘Revolting Children’ and ‘The Smell of Rebellion’. It will be available initially exclusively from the RSC and Matilda websites, who will ship internationally, with an iTunes release occurring on the 18th October to coincide with the musical’s first preview night at the Cambridge Theatre.
New Website
Secondly, the full Matilda The Musical website will be launched today, featuring more clips from the cast recording, in case you’re still unsure about buying yourself a copy, as well as being the one-stop shop for all the latest news and ticket buying information!
Matilda Casting
And finally, the news we promised a while ago – we can now reveal the four young actresses who will be playing the eponymous Matilda! Those names, in no particular order, are: Eleanor Worthington Cox, Cleo Demetriou, Kerry Ingram and Sophia Kiely.
Eleanor Worthington Cox has previously been seen in Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat in Liverpool and Cleo Demetriou has been seen in the West End’s The Sound of Music and Les Miserables. Kerry Ingram’s name you might already recognise, seeing as she played Matilda during the show’s initial Stratford run, while Sophia Kiely will be taking on her first ever professional role!
The four Matildas: (l-r) Eleanor, Cleo, Kerry and Sophia.
Previous cast announcements for the adults and Matilda’s schoolfriends can be found here and here and tickets for the show’s initial booking period at the Cambridge Theatre, from the 18th October 2011 to 12th February 2012, are on sale now from the Matilda The Musical website.
It’s almost upon us!
The gorgeous Matilda The Musicalcast recording for which Tim wrote the music and lyrics, recorded with the original Stratford-upon-Avon cast, will be out next week. It will be released on Dahl Day, the 13th September 2011 and available from the shop in Stratford-upon-Avon and online from the RSC shop, where you can already pre-order it.
Click right here for a special surprise taster treat!
For those who’ve been asking: Yes, it will also be available from iTunes, but not until the 18th October which is the date of the first preview performance at the Cambridge Theatre in London’s West End.
There’s a lot planned for Dahl Day: As well as the CD release, the names of the four young actresses playing the role of Matilda will be unveiled. The rest of the cast was announced last month as we detailed in this blog post. So keep an eye on the Matilda The Musical website where you can sign up to the RSC mailing list, find links to them on Twitter and Facebook and crucially buy tickets to the show.
If you need to catch up with the Matilda The Musical story so far or would like to view videos and read some of the many four and five star reviews the show received in Stratford-upon-Avon, pop on over to the Matilda page.
Tim already knows he’ll enjoy the Dublin gigs in mid October so much that he’s added more dates in Ireland and will be back before the month of October can end. Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 9am:
Dublin
Vicar Street
Sunday 30th October 2011 Tickets
Tim is, once again, returning to Largo at the Coronet this autumn! He’ll be returning for his sixth show there on the 5th October.
Tickets to see your favourite piano-playing, panda-eyed dweeb are already on sale now from the box office, and judging by past shows, you’ll need to be quick to ensure you get your ticket!
If you’re elsewhere in America, don’t forget that Tim has other US shows scheduled this autumn – details can be found on the gigs page.
As we posted hereTim Minchin Vs The Orchestras – Round II, in Australia, goes on public sale today. Ticket links for all the shows are available via Gigs.
Due to the gratifyingly high demand for tickets in the pre-sale, a second show has been added in Melbourne on Tuesday 7th February 2012 at The Palais.
Tickets will be available online from Ticketmaster or 136 100.
UPDATE:
As tickets are flying out of the door a second Sydney show has now been added: Saturday 4th February 2012 at the State Theatre. Tickets available online from Ticketmaster or 136 100.
American folk! We bring you the good news that Tim will be returning to your TV screens tomorrow night!
On Showtime, at 11pm ET/PT, your favourite Australian dork, Tim, will be appearing alongside Eddie Izzard, Jimmy Carr, Judah Friedlander, Chris Hardwick on The Green Room with Paul Provenza.
For those unfamiliar with the show, it’s basically a load of comedians in a roundtable setting, speaking off-the-cuff and uncensored in front of a studio audience with no rules, no agenda, no censors. Given some of the taboo subject Tim sings about, this sounds to me, like a show you don’t want to be missing out on!
Tim will be appearing at Hull City Hall as part of the Hull Comedy Festival on Wednesday 26th October 2011 at 7.30pm.
He’ll be performing solo, but joining him on stage there’ll be a piano polished to a level of shininess rivaled only by those leggings and his lyrical and musical gymnastics. Bliss.
Tickets are available from the Box Office: 01482 300300 (option 2) and online here.
More information can be found on the Hull Comedy Festival website here.
The burning question, of course, is: will there be more ice fishing material?
^ One for the nerds.
Ding[o]! Ding[o]!
Seconds out! The shoes are off… again. Once more our nerdy minstrel will be teasing his hair to improbable heights, shimmying into his tightest attire, limbering up his fingers for yet more piano gymnastics and practicing those iconic dance moves for his feet and brows – all in order to perform again with symphony orchestras across Australia.
Following the amazing success of his sell out tour in March and his acclaimed arena tour of the UK, Tim is returning to Australia early next year, for a second round with their best symphony orchestras and this time the brilliant Australian composer-conductor Iain Grandage will be wielding the baton whilst Pete Clements and Ben Van Der Wal will be back on the beat with bass and drums respectively.
Tickets go on general sale to the public Friday 2 September, 9am.
The pre-sale starts Wednesday 31st August. Those signed up to Tim’s mailing list will have the pre-sale details sent to their Inbox. (more…)
We said we’d post a reminder about the TV broadcast of the BBC’s Comedy Prom and here it is!
This Saturday, 27th August, as well as the return of Doctor Who, is the broadcast of the BBC’s Comedy Prom, as recorded on the 13th August. Fortunately they don’t clash, however, they do have something in common. What? You’ll have to tune in to find out!
They say bad things come in threes, and here to disprove this nonsense, is Tim, with a third US gig announcement this month for another three American tour dates confirmed for this Autumn!
St. Andrews Hall in Detroit, will play host to our fine, fuzzy-haired fool on the 30th September 2011.
Barrymore Theatre in Madison, will see our prodigal piano player on the 1st October 2011.
Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee, will present our bright, bare-footed buffoon on the 2nd October 2011.
Tickets for all shows go on general sale on Friday at 10am. You can grab Detroit tickets from Livenation, Madison tickets from the Barrymore Theatre box office and Milwaukee tickets from the Pabst Theatre box office. There are presales available for all three shows from tomorrow at 10am, and we’ll be updating this post with the details before it starts.
And, in case you missed them earlier, there are also US dates confirmed for New York, Mesa, Dallas and Boulder. More details for each of these can be found on the gigs page.
UPDATE: Presale details are as follows. The password is ‘electric’ for Detroit and Milwaukee, with a special link here for Milwaukee tickets. Madison tickets are available now, from the updated link above.
The casting for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Matilda The Musical, was announced today!
Most of you will already know by now* about Matilda The Musical, based on the enchanting Roald Dahl book, produced by the RSC and directed by Matthew Warchus. Acclaimed playwright Dennis Kelly wrote the book with the music and lyrics by a certain Tim Minchin, oh yes.
Following a highly successful sold-out run at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, from November 2010 to January 2011, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s world premiere production of Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical will transfer to London’s Cambridge Theatre, previewing from Tuesday 18 October.
Many of the original cast will be returning, so Bertie Carvel is back as the hilariously terrifying Miss Trunchbull; Paul Kaye as the colourful chancer Mr Wormwood; Josie Walker as the flamboyantly expressive Mrs Wormwood and Lauren Ward as the gentle and kind Miss Honey. Also reprising their roles from the original production in Stratford, are Marc Antolin, Verity Bentham, Peter Howe, Michael Kent, Melanie La Barrie, Matthew Malthouse, Alastair Parker, Nick Searle and Emily Shaw.
Further adult casting includes: Matthew Clark, Leanne Pinder, Rachel Moran, Lucy Thatcher, Tim Walton and Gary Watson.
The four young actresses playing the role of Matilda are still being kept top secret and appropriately they will be announced on Dahl Day on Tuesday 13 September.
As before there will be three teams of eight young performers playing the roles of Bruce, Lavender, Amanda, Nigel, Eric and the other pupils at Crunchem Hall Primary School. They are: Thomas Atkinson, Jake Bailey, James Beesley, Ruby Bridle, Oonagh Cox, Jemima Eaton, Alicia Gould, Zachary Harris, Callum Henderson, Fleur Houdijk, Jamie Kaye, William Keeler, Lily Laight, Katie Lee, Isobelle Molloy, Jemima Morgan, Toby Murray, Alfie Manser, Lucy May Pollard, Annabel Parsons, Ellie Simons, Louis Suc, Jaydon Vijn and Ted Wilson.
If you’d like tickets to this amazing musical for adults and children alike then they are available from the Matilda The Musical website where you can also sign up to the RSC mailing list for news. The gorgeous soundtrack, recorded with the original Stratford-upon-Avon cast, will be out very soon. It’s available to pre-order from The RSC Shop already.
*If you’d like more information and to see the trailer or to catch up with the story so far and read the awesome four and five star reviews the show received in Stratford-upon-Avon, pop on over to the Matilda page also accessible whenever you like via the pretty ‘Matilda’ tab at the top.
Yes! It’s the long-awaited, long-clamoured for announcement that Tim will finally be releasing a DVD in that popular NTSC, region 1 format!
Happy Roald Dahl Day, to you! To celebrate what would have been the great author’s 95th birthday, we’ve got, not one, not two but THREE pieces of exciting Matilda news!
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