An Unsentimental Man’s Flair for Emotion
Tim Minchin flew into New York from Los Angeles to drop by rehearsals for “Groundhog Day,” an adaptation of the 1993 time- loop movie comedy and his second Broadway show after the hit “Matilda the Musical.” Following the New York visit, this Australian composer and performer was off to Hungary and Croatia, to play Friar Tuck in a Robin Hood feature.
Mr. Minchin, 41, has been on an impressive creative streak since 2005, when he presented his breakthrough comic- cabaret solo, “Darkside,” at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He has toured his bitingly satirical songs i nternationally, and his passionate admirers have helped propel him from intimate clubs to fronting symphony orchestras in arenas.
But recently NBC Universal shut down “Larrikins,” an animated feature Mr. Minchin had been working on for four years, thus inflicting a rare setback.
In just the past five years, he has portrayed Judas in a concert tour of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” Rosencrantz in Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” for the Sydney Theater Company, and a brutal ex- convict in the Australian period mini-series “The Secret River.”
And, there are the musicals. Based on the classic Roald Dahl novel of the same name, “Matilda,” about a brainy little girl who loves books and hates idiots and authoritarians, closed in January after nearly four years on Broadway and 12 Tony nominations. It is still running on the West End.
Mr. Minchin and the director Matthew Warchus, who staged “Matilda,” teamed up again for “Groundhog Day,” with Danny Rubin adapting his own screenplay. “When ‘Matilda’ came on Broadway, Matthew said we should do ‘Groundhog Day’ next,” Mr. Minchin recalled. “And I went ‘ Yeah!’ ”
The new show, which opens on April 17, may well repeat the success of “Matilda”; when “Groundhog Day” had its premiere in London in August, Ben Brantley of The New York Times praised it as “a bright whirligig of a show.”
Mr. Rubin said he started being approached about stage adaptations 20 years ago, not long after the release of the movie in which Bill Murray plays a mean-spirited weatherman, Phil, who relives the same day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, over and over.
Stephen Sondheim even expressed interest in the 2000s, before withdrawing. “In the press he said [the movie] was unimprovable,” Mr. Minchin recalled. “I don’t think art needs to be improvable. I don’t suppose ‘Les Misérables’ is an improvement on the Hugo [novel], but it’s brilliant.”
He paused, then added, chuckling, “I think ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ is an improvement on the Bible.”
Still, he is aware that “Groundhog Day” has many fans ready to pounce on perceived betrayals. “I had to be careful because the movie is a bit of a sacred text, and I don’t really do sacred,” Mr. Minchin said. At least unlike the “Superstar” lyricist Tim Rice, who could not share notes with the Bible’s authors, he had a direct line to his source material.
“I came in with a script and an outline and a lot of song ideas, and Tim came with the same thing,” Mr. Rubin said. “From that, we massaged the show together.”
Mr. Minchin’s distinctive touch is emotion untainted by sentimentali- ty. “Matilda” and “Groundhog Day” deal with children and redemption — subjects that have been known to trigger maudlin triteness.
“Nothing is more obscene than redemption,” he said. “All the redemption in real life — not being an alcoholic anymore and stopping sleeping around — it’s all so boring.
“The way the movie stops being too mawkish is because Bill [Murray] is in front of it, being ironic. We couldn’t do that — there’s no point in writing a musical if you’re going to be ironic the whole time.”
Indeed, Mr. Minchin always keeps an eye on the thin line between irony (which he isn’t particularly keen on) and satire (which he loves). What helped him understand Phil was an unlikely commonality. “He learns to be kind and generous and altruistic without expectation of reward,” said Mr. Minchin, an outspoken atheist.
In the “Groundhog Day” number “Stuck,” for instance, local healers suggest Phil try enemas and reiki, before confessing, “I don’t even know if I believe what I’m saying/ This guy is clearly nuts, but he’s desperate and he’s paying” — a line that could have been lifted from one of Mr. Minchin’s solo anthems.
“I think Tim was mostly writing a version of himself into Phil,” Mr. Rubin said. “Not that Tim is that kind of a jerk — he’s absolutely the opposite. At the same time, he knows that character.”
Mr. Minchin was in New York when he heard the “Larrikins” had been terminated. He immediately booked a show at a cabaret where, he announced, he would be “getting drunk and playing ballads.” Going onstage was a way to retrieve a sense of self.
“Hollywood could not have been more of a cliché if it tried,” Mr. Minchin said. “I came thinking, all that talk about money and executives, surely it’s hyperbole. But it couldn’t have fit the script more.”
‘Nothing is more obscene than redemption.’