Sunday 2nd April - 6:00 pm
I wouldn’t recommend anyone seeing Hannah Gadsby’s show who hasn’t seen her previously and wasn’t familiar with her work. I also wouldn’t recommend seeing Gadsby if you’re looking for traditional comedy either.
I also wouldn’t recommend seeing if if you read her MICF show description.
All that said it’s...different, and it’s certainly an insightful, emotional performance.
There weren’t a lot of laughs in this show, and it covers several pretty rocky, mature and unfunny subjects.
I certainly admire Hannah Gadsby’s determinism, if this is the show she’s going to be performing throughout the MICF, because it’s heavy stuff. Heavy and perhaps cathartic? I’m not sure.
During the show I thought that maybe I’d classify it as slow burn or low key comedy, but the comedy was...somewhat lacking.
I once heard, I think Wil Anderson on a podcast say that comedians take real life, or real life events, or events that happened nearby to them and re-craft them, edit and finesse them and then that’s where you get a joke from.
Hannah Gadsby said in her show that a comedian injects anxiety into the room and then alleviates it with a joke. Except in her show, where the anxiety is just left hanging.
In this sense it felt a lot more like a lecture / monologue than a comedy show with structure or flow.
One part of the show that I did enjoy, and which Gadsby spoke with passion about was art history, cultural identifies and our perception of these. While not laugh a minute funny it was insightful and interesting.
Gadsby says something at the start of her show, that elicited a big ‘awww, no’ from the audience, and at the end it’s countered by a statement of ‘I’m just getting started’. At the end, coupled with this statement, Nanette, really seemed like a catharsis, an unloading of information, of thoughts and ideas, of pains and of history. There are passions that come through in the show, there is anger, frustration and there are some, fleeting moments of humour. It wasn’t what I was expecting and I wouldn’t see it again, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a night of comedy. But if you’re a fan of Hannah Gadsby it will certainly be insightful although not what you’d be expecting. I look forward to the future of Gadsby’s career, be it another different show or in another medium.