Play it again

The entertainer behind the musicals Groundhog Day and Matilda talks about dashed Hollywood hopes and feeling out of step with liberal progressives

- Tom Lamont

THE AUSTRALIAN COMPOSER and entertainer Tim Minchin sits outside a rehearsal room in London. It is a pleasant day in April. Tooled up on tea and creative adrenaline, talking quickly and well, the 47-year-old is comparing the experience of working on two big stage musicals. In 2010, there was Matilda, the planet-devouring omni-smash, which flourished in the West End, on Broadway and on family car journeys, transforming Minchin from an anarchic musical comedian who could fill a good-sized room at the Edinburgh festival into a feted and wealthy man. "I mean, Matilda, fuck," is all the loquacious Minchin can say about that show's successes for now. More interesting to him, because more troubled, was the follow-up, Groundhog Day, a 2016 musical adapted from the popular 90s movie of the same name.

"When you make something so detailed, over so many thousands of hours, something you think is broadly appealing, about how we're to be as people - and it doesn't fly? That's incredibly painful," Minchin says.

Dressed today in muted colours, his untidy reddish hair tied back under a baseball cap, he lists the little catastrophes that hobbled Groundhog Day seven years ago: investors pulling out; the choreographer falling ill; a feeling of being rushed to New York after a strong London opening, before the show was quite ready. Groundhog Day closed on Broadway in autumn 2017, after 200-odd performances, and has more or less sat in a drawer since. "It's not a meritocracy," Minchin shrugs. "Mamma Mia's one of the highest-selling musicals ever... Broadway is not a measure of what is good, or not to me. If you want to go there to make your moolah, then you can't be surprised if you have a rough ride."