Cabaret Festival. The Banquet Room. 13 Jun 2025

 

Gillian Cosgriff is almost a veteran of the Cabaret Festival, bringing entertaining and often interactive comedy to the program for some years now. For this year’s offering, she has brought a game show, which turns out be a kind of cross between Spicks and Specks and Rockwiz with a dash of Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

 

Cosgriff opens with the inevitable yet unmemorable cabaret style song; having got that out of the way, it’s game on! The style if not the content of these games are familiar to many, so it didn’t take long to get into it. First up, two audience members were given seven cards and told to put the names of the Von Trapp in order of their ages on a board. This, like all the other games, involves a lot audience participation (read screaming) as people tested their memories; was Liesl the eldest or was it Kurt? As they say, hilarity ensued.

 

Next up, with the same players, the cards were girls names and unsurprisingly, the goal was to list the order of the names in the chorus of Lou Bega’s Mambo No 5 (A little bit of Monica). Funny listening to everyone around you mumbling “A little bit of Rita's all I need
A little bit of Tina's what I see…”

 

Special guests were invited onto the stage, with the first being Bobby Fox, who has a show in the Festival called Mr Entertainment. I’d seen him perform a guest spot earlier at the Cabaret Club; he’s the guy with the blonde streaked hair and moustache, wearing a dinner suit, singing cabaret and stage musical standards in that vaguely Las Vegas accent. No doubt a talented performer, I couldn’t get the image of Bob Downe out of my mind…

 

The games continued, including a round of Laser Minelli featuring Artistic Director Virginia Gay, who is always up for a bit of fun.

 

This is a late night show, so it’s a bit ribald in places (hence the ‘Buzzcock’s reference) and it’s a good closer for the evening, especially if you’ve seen a show previously, as many of the audience appeared to have done. Cosgriff is quick on her feet and proves herself a brilliant host for this format, aided by a great little band and some feature guests, who will probably change each show. And at the end, remember FFS, everyone’s a winner.

 

Arna Eyers-White

 

When: 13 to 14 Jun

Where: The Banquet Room

Bookings: Closed