Through a skilful blend of comedy, music and storytelling, Michael Giglio emulates the bards of the Middle Ages by having the audience laugh through the pain of the contemporary live music scene. Luke Mesterovic reviews That's Me in the Corner at Erskineville Town Hall for Sydney Fringe 2026, ahead of its return to the Pottery Lane Performance Space in Lane Cove on 24 and 26 September.
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Through a skilful blend of comedy, music and storytelling, That's Me in the Corner sees Michael Giglio emulate the bards of the Middle Ages by having the audience laugh through the pain of the contemporary live music scene.
Whatever happened to pub rock? When was the last time you could go to a bowlo and watch a band like INXS or Midnight Oil play? What role does the modern pub musician play in our lives, if any? It's these questions, and more, that writer/performer Michael Giglio explores through comedy and song in his one‑man show, That's Me in the Corner.
The production begins with us being shuffled into the backroom of Erskineville Town Hall, the interwar architecture of which is fitting to create the "Insert Wanky Colonial Name Bar & Bistro" where the show takes place.
Giglio is already inside, getting set up on the stage in his alter ego, Gigz, a wannabe pub rock legend hoping to make it big, "like CD sales big," but is forced to compete for our attention alongside the Keno, the footy, the pokies, and the looming meat raffle, which we've all been given tickets for.
There's an implicit understanding throughout that he is not AC/DC or the Divinyls. He is not performing original songs to a packed‑out crowd; he is playing Brown‑Eyed Girl to a room of empty stools and one table of four because Davo behind the bar told him to.
What unfolds is a tribute to the role that pub rock has, or perhaps did, play in Australian culture. Giglio gets to show off his chops as a musician by leading the audience in sing‑alongs of classic pub anthems and spoofs of them as well. While people were keen to join in, you got the sense that many remained silent to try and catch all the lyrical jokes and wordplay.
At first, it seems as though this is all the show is going to be. Some comedy, some sing‑alongs, all the while pondering whether the pub muso is going the way of the dodo. If this was it, it would've been a fine production.
But Giglio uses it to lull us into a false sense of security, before plunging us into the real dilemma of the show: to what extent is he complicit in feeding the pernicious poker machine industry that contemporary pubs are built on?
New South Wales' "Vibrancy Reforms" allow pubs and clubs to keep the pokies running for an extra two hours on nights where a live performance is held. We're forced to consider whether pub musicians, and by extension ourselves, are supporting live music or these businesses' ability to exploit addiction.
This is the contradiction at the heart of the show, and what makes it so compelling. Pubs on one hand are places of genuine community, one of the last surviving intergenerational third spaces where you can meet people while enjoying live music, cheering on your favourite sport team or playing pool.
Yet on the other, the modern pub is a business that thrives not on community, but social isolation, making its money from some of humanity's oldest addictions — alcohol and gambling.
As Gigz ploughs on with his increasingly chaotic set, the questions of what caused the death of live music, the role of pubs and the reverence for the supposed golden age of the '80s begin to swirl overhead.
It's this nuance that makes it interesting and left me thinking about these questions long after I left the show, and you get the sense that Giglio himself is trying to make sense of how he fits into it all.
The intimate space is great for a performance like this. You can tell Giglio revels in the opportunity to engage in audience interaction. Crowd work can sometimes be a lazy way of padding out runtime, and I was initially worried that we would be the latest victims held hostage by a guy with a guitar, but I was happy to be proven wrong. Here, it feels earned and fits in well with his persona of a slightly awkward yet affable musician who definitely thought more people would be here to see him perform.
It's also nice to see a depiction of Australiana and pub culture that doesn't give any credence to the kind of racist, nationalistic chauvinism that is currently on the rise in the form of Pauline Hanson's One Nation.
We also get to see Gigz try to make sense of which positive male role models he can look up to after realising how many of his music idols turned out to be deeply problematic men — a line especially poignant given that week's revelations regarding key male players for the Sydney Swans.
The more the show progresses, the more blurry the line between Gigz and Giglio becomes. As Gigz, he is performing for the audience as a musician, but as that mask begins to slip and he talks us through his struggles, we're left wondering how intimate we're getting with the real Giglio.
This is a lot to unpack in a forty‑minute runtime, but it works. Giglio's strength as a performer, crucial for a one‑person show, is on full display in his seamless transitions between characters like the hunched and cantankerous owner Davo, a drunken patron from the pokies and an unhinged Peter Garrett. This bombastic chorus is then balanced by moments of raw, quiet tenderness that give this very funny show serious emotional weight.
Although an appreciation for music certainly bolsters That's Me in the Corner, it isn't reliant upon it. This is a show everyone will find something to enjoy in, be it the comedy, the songs or the dream of a world where art is not subservient to capital. And if none of those are appealing, you'll still have a chance of winning the coveted meat raffle.
That's Me in the Corner will be staged again as a part of the Best of Sydney Fringe at the Pottery Lane Performance Space in Lane Cove on 24 and 26 September.
Writer / Performer: Michael Giglio
Reviewed by Luke Mesterovic.
Event listing: sydneyfringe.com/events/thats-me-in-the-corner
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