This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Gillian Cosgriff shares her scatty, accident-prone life, covering topics from the creation of to-do lists to the best forms of revenge in the wake of relationship break-ups, to the importance of quality bandaids in the life of a well-groomed modern woman, all in explanation of the show’s titular premise.

With accessible charm, Cosgriff opens with a song about procrastination, eliciting empathetic laughter, before introducing her 26-year-old, yet-to-get-on-with-things self.  Her lightly self-deprecating spoken links between songs place everything into a context maintaining the overall theme, despite veering from one idea to another in her tightly constructed lyrics. Moving from keyboard to ukulele for a song, Cosgriff demonstrates her comfortable familiarity with stand up comedy staples, reflecting on incidents with audiences past, and setting up ideas for clever call-back quips later in the show.

The comfort with the stand-up patter extends to longer sequences, a hypothetical phone call with her mother being an enjoyable example. Drawing parallels between the admonitions received the night before school assignments were due, and the looming larger project of getting her life in order by her 30^th birthday, Cosgriff captures the elements of her scatty stage persona and her mother’s bewildered support to good effect. The sharper edge of her wit turns outwards when it comes to former boyfriends, though, with one being thoroughly lambasted for his intellectual deficits and over-reliance on SMS autocorrect, while the song ‘Nice Guys’ celebrates the severing of ties with a cheat. The hilarious use of recordings of messages left on friends’ voicemails when intoxicated, the slightly too bitter recounting of run-ins with a vegan extremist, the dream of becoming a better person through completing to-do lists… this is all good fun, but the sweetness of her quirky letter to herself at age 16 leaves us not only with smiles but with genuine lightness of heart to go with them.

Particularly in Perth it is hard not to draw comparisons between the work of Gillian Cosgriff and Tim Minchin – similar quirky twists in topic, lyrical intelligence and jaunty, catchy tunes that reveal musical understanding and experience across genres. While it would be wonderful to see Cosgriff write some award-winning musicals, in the meantime it is a treat to have the opportunity to see her performing live and honing her entertainment talents.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars