And all that Jazz Review

August 18, 2025

And all that Jazz Review

Until 24th August 2025

Gillian Garganus appears to have all the assets of a successful cabaret act. She is bright, bubbly, has great energy and is bursting with confidence as she rallies her audience, swiftly building rapport and conditioning us to cheer and clap on demand at any given point in one of her stories. We are crowned her fans – the ‘Gillianaires’ and referred to in this context throughout which adds an extra element of fun to the show.

“Garganus sparkles on stage”

Garganus sparkles on stage and regales tales of her aspiring musical theatre career and the jobs she’s taken to pay the bills, which all end with the same outcome – “fired”. She shares the challenges of not succeeding in her early career whilst many of her peers picked up contracts on Broadway musicals, but she stayed strong and this determination makes her even more likeable. Any fellow performers in the audience would most certainly have empathised with her struggles.

Garganus sets the tone of a cabaret show, however, this is, in the main, a stand-up show. The stories are good, engaging and entertaining, all delivered with that natural performer’s instinct, but there are not enough laugh out loud moments and the energy in the room dips at times.

There is self-deprecation, initially making fun of her own name, then moving onto her upbringing in the southern states where people, with their slow drawl have a phrase “I don’t mess with that” which means, I won’t do that. This attitude seems to apply to most things in the modern world including credit cards, internet shopping and recycling … a word they “can’t even say”. This section of her act segues into her being a performer and needing to get away to university to study theatre.

In this half-hour entertainment, Garganus goes on to tell us of the telesales job where she finds short term success only to be fired for sharing tweets and breaking the company’s confidentiality policy. She then tries her luck promoting shows giving out flyers, but again this job doesn’t work out. Her rebellion always too much for sensible employment.

The last of her stories culminates in a situation with Garganus not getting to perform the song she so desperately wanted to sing – All That Jazz, which feeds nicely into her performing it for us. This was the highlight of the show, combining her musical theatre talent with her comedy skills. The room lit up.

Garganus is a performer with a huge talent but the format of this show didn’t seem to play to her strengths and could certainly do with more musical comedy thrown in where she will undoubtedly achieve great success.

Stephen Cambridge