Review – This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Warm, funny, and self-proclaimed terrible person Gillian Cosgriff tells us in song why she can’t have nice things – like shaved legs, hot dumb boyfriends, a mortgage and a real job. Cabaret Comedy’s girl next door, Gill is a 26 year-old university graduate and actor whose skills include, but are not limited to, piano-playing, singing, ukelele, stand-up, high-pitched adorable squeaks mid-sentence, and procrastibation. No, that is not a typo: procrastibation. She leaves amusing drunken voicemails for her friends and ex-boyfriends who no longer find them amusing, and is an anti-vegan-extremist spokeswoman who uses postage stamps as bandaids.

Aside from the fact that she is incredibly musically gifted, her easy-going, lightly self-deprecating humour draws the audience in and leaves them audibly sighing for more. Literally.

Highlights include: the song about her ex-boyfriend Jasper – not the sharpest tool in the shed but the shiniest – which revisited amusing mis-pronunciations (not a typo) via text message and phone call asking Gill if she dumped him because of ‘somethink’ he said; dad-jokey and cringe-worthy (but in a good way) “The Beekeeper and the Vegan”; “The Bandaid Trilogy” (you’ll see); and “Four Years ‘Til Thirty”, a reminder that having nice things like jobs, mortgages, kids and pets are ambitious wishes that may or may not be overrated. The closing nostalgia song was a slightly weak ending compared to the vivacious strength of the rest of the show (only a slight hiccup).

A colourful, clever, honest and anecdotal commentary on life as a twenty-something female actor-artist-procrastinator. See this show if you do embarrassing things and like hearing about other people doing embarrassing things, too. If not, see it anyway.