Powerful and eye-opening : Nanette by Hannah Gadsby

While many stand-up comedy shows provide us with endless laughter and enjoyment, some tend, on the contrary, to leave us stunned at just how unfunny they are.

Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette is this type of show. A show that’s the total opposite of what you’d expect, but by design…

Gadsby begins the show with some run-of-the-mill stand-up, gaining the occasional laugh from her audience.

Her humorous stories generally detail her experience growing up gay in Tasmania, which (spoiler alert) was very homophobic in the 1980s.

She talks about her experiences of hiding her sexuality from her peers and parents, dating other women, and a more sombre story about being hate-crimed.

Then comes the unfunny bit.

Up until this point, Gadsby is making jokes out of her coming-of-age trauma, often leaving out the gloomier parts of stories in order to gain a laugh. Gadsby then retells these stories, leaving in the darker and more tragic elements of her tales, creating more and more tension within the theatre.

As Gadsby explains, a comedian’s job is to build up tension by telling stories and jokes which inspire panic and anxiety, and then release this tension by telling a wittier or a ‘happy-ever-after’ ending to a story, with an audience laughing as they are relieved of their horror.

Gadsby, however, doesn’t reveal the ‘happy-ever-after’ part of these stories – because there is none. She draws the audience in with the expectation of being filled with adrenalin when the joke is finally told…but she never tells a joke.

Gadsby tells her stories of homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, and hatred towards minorities, not to strike a reaction from the audience, but to highlight that there are no funny parts to these stories, and that no-one has a licence to hate others, something which the people, she grew up around believed they held.

Gadsby also discusses the mental health of Vincent Van Gogh, and how this influenced his art. Later, she talks about Pablo Picasso’s contributions to Cubism and how she regards him as a misogynistic artist.

Towards the end, she delivers an extremely powerful, compelling, and thought-provoking monologue – highlighting the difficulties and experiences that members of minority groups, such as herself, have faced throughout their lives.

Gadsby throws us into her world, a world filled with abuse and bigotry, a world which isn’t filled with the comedy and humour like you’d expect it to be when watching one of her shows.

Overall, Nanette, while remaining an entertaining display of comedy, is also an incredibly powerful and eye-opening experience for just about anyone who watches.

l Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette is streaming now on Netflix.