The Fig Tree

Book, Music and Lyrics by Gillian Cosgriff

Directed by Virginia Gay

Award-winning musical comedian, writer and actor Gillian Cosgriff presents a work-in-progress showing of her new musical The Fig Tree. It’s an existential rom-com about relationships, choice, indecision, monogamy, love, parallel universes, and figs.

Liv and Tom are a couple in their thirties trying to decide whether or not to have a baby. Tom is ready, Liv is unsure. Tired of discussing it round in circles, they make a decision to take six weeks apart – a “monogamy vacation” – before they make a decision. When Liv meets Elliott, a former student of Tom’s, the two hit it off and things become complicated. Complications escalate further when Liv begins entering alternate realities via an ancient fig tree in her family’s backyard.

The Fig Tree focuses on the constant struggle in any relationship between security and spontaneity. It has the romantic intellect of Before Sunrise, the humour and neuroses of When Harry Met Sally, and the strange other-worldly sadness of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s about reckoning with the fact that we only get to choose one life to live. Even though the world presents us with myriad possibilities, we cannot keep our fingers wedged in every page of a choose-your-own-adventure book.

Following an initial development showing at Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2023, Cosgriff’s witty, poetic and poignant new musical has its first Sydney presentation in a new draft.