So F*****g Rock

Tim Minchin sits barefoot at a grand piano in heavy eyeliner, playing intricate arpeggios that happen to be attached to tunes about blow-up dolls and rationalist philosophy. The set works because the musicianship is unironic. Rather than plucking two chords on a ukulele to deliver one-liners, he constructs multi-part cabaret suites that take ridiculous premises, like an arena-rock plea to use canvas grocery bags, and treats them with full theatrical seriousness.

Filmed at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre in May 2008 and released to wider digital audiences in 2015, the performance captured Minchin as his live following was expanding. Having won the Edinburgh Fringe Best Newcomer prize three years earlier, he was testing whether an evening of skeptical rants and piano showtunes could hold mid-sized theater audiences without an ensemble.

The set leans heavily on the material that built his initial cult status. “Rock N Roll Nerd” mocks his own bourgeois upbringing and total inability to project dangerous rock credibility. “Ten Foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins” attacks afterlife promises with playground literalism, while “Peace Anthem for Palestine” offers Middle Eastern peace mediated entirely through culinary oil preferences.

Between numbers, Minchin paces the stage to deliver beat poems and casual monologues about confirmation bias and domestic squabbling. He wraps the evening with “Not Perfect,” a surprisingly earnest reflection on his family and upbringing that strips away the satire without puncturing the mood.