Johanna Cosgrove, immediately, has a presence you can’t look away from, and you would never want to. In fact, you might like her to add another hour to her show because such joy and poignant observations are a real balm right now. After listening to Johanna’s podcasts and seeing her at work in the Shorty Street writer’s room, I already know she is a sparklingly funny person by nature. On stage, in a crisp one-hour comedy show? She does not disappoint.

Without going into too much detail about the narrative nooks and crannies of Sweetie, it’s a pacey and well-punctuated delve into Johanna’s self-discovery as a queer woman, her past relationships (and short escapades), her family history, and the emotional undercurrent that she experienced throughout all. I love the insights into her wonderfully strange extended family, especially the way she describes her ex-military Dad. I could watch a whole show just on this.

Johanna has a talent for crowd work which, I hear, is notoriously difficult. Her knack for building instant rapport with the audience is testament not only to her honed comedic craft but to who she must be as a person. She brings us in warmly yet teasingly, and riffs seamlessly when late-comers arrive (okay okay it was me, my first time coming late to a show I am so sorry Johanna. Theatre gods shame and punish me, I can take it).

The content of Johanna’s work is important to me: a 30-something year-old woman who lives life with velocity, loves hard, falls hard, recovers in strange and wonderful ways, and shares it all with genuine honesty and self-reflection that only makes it funnier. She is self-deprecating but not in a way that flagellates herself for our benefit, or falls into any kind of trope.

Johanna isn’t just funny with her astute writing; her physical and vocal skills are impressive too, and create a killer scaffolding for her content. There are little physical and vocal motifs that run through the show, weaving it all together. Such as the rapid rundown of the Bog Woman (you had to be there, also, I shall be Googling), faux-sexy saunters, and outbursts of millennial-style singing of lines.

Johanna is one of the best out there and I think there’s no limits to what she could do on stage, screen … anywhere people want to laugh while coming away feeling like they understand a little more about the brilliant lives of 30-something women who constantly learn, explore, discover, fuck up and get up.

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