Lorna Irvine reviews 'a delightfully meandering comedy cabaret'.
Many shows do not culminate in a beery hug from a Kurt Cobain lookalike in full wedding dress and smeared mascara, but then Ryan Good's Cosmonaut is very much it's own thing: whether meditating on the wisdom of naming a whale Becky after an adolescent girlfriend when he was a lovestruck boy (way to enhance a pubescent girl's self-esteem, Ryan!) or trying Cosmopolitan's Worst Sex Tips—the pepper one bringing a particular tear to the eye—it's all done strictly for research purposes, of course. The title, a loose reference to said Bimbo Bible, is merely a frame for a delightfully meandering comedy cabaret looking at the dodgy 'advice' from a male feminist perspective.
Ryan Good is an effervescent, breathless storyteller, disarming the audience with a saucy paean to the perineum played with a uke, or mining his own most cringe-making relationship experiences for laughs. But it's never simply throwaway—he doesn't deal in condescension or 'mansplaining'. His slightly ramshackle craft is such that we all become complicit in his humane, big-hearted filth: with deeper, more poignant messages underpinning it.
There's a nod to the endemic patriarchal advertising served up by the mass media, and how passive consumerism and sexism can slip by unnoticed if we let it.What of the larger issues surrounding men and women? Remember the somewhat spurious sixties notion of equality? Good appreciates this idealism, despite being only 32, and it's this, via a trippy dream, that he craves—a wider discourse on sexual and emotional liberation.
Sure, he may be a hippy with a penchant for Eric Clapton, Elliot Smith and Aerosmith, but he's part of the new breed of performance hippy, alongside another hit of this year's Fringe, Jamie Wood. These young men are full of good intentions, warmth and a little self-effacing vulnerability.
As Good selects the young, unsuspecting Jordan from the audience (to the mortification of his girlfriend) and invites him to a bizarre, bromance ritual of shaving hearts into their body hair, the lad can't resist, and within minutes, they're hanging, drinking beer like long-time buddies. All that's missing is the sweat lodge.
But the most delightful moment comes towards the end of the show—a tender, beautiful surprise that would melt the hardest of hearts. Go along and be charmed for yourself—it's adorable. Another great antidote to the snide, easy laddism of traditional Fringe comedy guys, Cosmonaut proves that in this space, everyone can hear you scream... Or possibly sneeze.
At Underbelly until August 30th.
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