Now in its 24th year, the Adelaide Cabaret Festival’s annual celebration of all things cabaret sparkles and shines, blazing a joyous and slightly scintillating trail through the wintry Adelaide nights.

Under the artistic direction of Virginia Gay, there is a lot to love about this program.

I have long said cabaret is a magpie artform: its artistic boundaries are flexible and it collects other performance forms within its “storytelling through song” bower. Seated at round cabaret tables, you could be sitting next to anyone.

This connection, this sense of being part of it all, runs deep through this year’s festival.

Gillian Cosgriff’s Actually, Good embodies cabaret at its best. A deftly woven and immaculately paced story, this show is a full-throttle, cartwheeling glorious ode to the power of death to make us focus on life in this moment.

Cosgriff makes space for the audience to construct a unique-to-tonight list of likes. We delight, as she does, in the diverse, off-beat, wacky and poignant responses.

Cosgriff is one of Australia’s most exciting musical comedy songwriters and performers. Her lightning-quick thinking and generosity of spirit to the audience, combined with gorgeous original songs made me want to see it all again, and bring all of my friends to share it with.

Fascinating Aida are the masters and creators of this style of witty, close-harmony, take-no-prisoners, sharp British comedy – and they, as they say in the classics, have “still got it” after 40 years. I first saw them perform in 1998. It was the show that made me desperately want to do whatever this thing called cabaret was. Seeing them again all these years later was a near-religious experience.

They deftly skewer a rich array of socio-political golden idols and the audience cheer, laugh and hoot: from I’m Getting It, to Lieder (with the original Weimar choreography, including Dillie Keane’s piano stool acrobatics) and a “medley of their greatest hit”, Cheap........

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