Gillian Cosgriff is a multi-talented performer with great potential; a virtuoso keyboardist who can compose and sing her own material while projecting a persona that is worldly-wise without being cynical or jaded. As an introduction to her original approach, the entertainment began with a jaunty little number that gave the spiel normally spoken over the PA system: the one about where the exits are in case of fire and information on how to find the bar and the toilets. So when Cosgriff got up from the keyboard to commence the show proper we were already laughing.
Interspersing stand-up comedy with amusing musical numbers, Cosgriff was onstage for an hour non-stop. She called an audience member up to test her on her knowledge of capital cities – she professes to know every capital of every country, and after this section I was prepared to believe her. She learnt all this, of course, from the internet, and this gave her act an entrée into the World Wide Web with its sometimes untrustworthy information, and thence to social media. ’Facebook,’ she says, ‘is like going into a room with a bunch of people I don’t like and asking them to tell me stuff about themselves that I don’t really want to know.’
But you can learn really cool stuff on the internet, too. Take Labord’s chameleon, for example. It hatches in November, grows to adulthood very quickly, mates, lays eggs, and dies before March is out. Cosgriff drew comparisons with human life, jokingly at first but ending with a parallel timeline that demonstrated the futility of our own existence. This was about as serious as Cosgriff got, and having given us food for thought, she soon had us laughing again, this time about family relationships, with a tale of a horrible bag her mother made for her that she quietly placed on a pile of things to throw out when she was shifting house. Her mother visited to see if she could help, and apparently collapsed in tears when she saw the bag on the rubbish pile. But lo and behold, when Cosgriff went to comfort her mother, she quickly realised that the shaking shoulders were due to laughter. This may or may not be a true story, but it is the kind of thing Cosgriff should develop to give her act more depth.
Putting these two tales aside, Cosgriff gave us a line of patter that was mildly amusing but unremarkable. I feel this artist is still developing and has, perhaps, yet to discover her true metier. Her brand of humour is aimed, I think, at a relatively young audience – I’d say the typical Cosgriff fan is twenty-something, single (or partnered but childless) and professional. Her work is entertaining but forgettable, like social media, so she is definitely up with the times. It will be interesting to see how her work matures in the next decade or so. I suspect there are hidden depths to Cosgriff that she has yet to plumb, and when she does, we shall see a truly fabulous entertainer emerge.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
Gillian Cosgriff is Whelmed
Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
10-20 February
Fringe World, Perth
23 January – 22 February 2015
www.fringeworld.com.au
