Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018)'s comments

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jhhayes

Simply brilliant. To call this a mere stand-up routine would be insulting. It is SO much more...

5 years 4 months ago

I don't normally watch stand-up comedy specials, and I don't know how Hannah Gadsby's Nanette fell on my radar, but I had an hour to kill and pushed the button. All I can say is that I was not ready. Now, I'm always interested in different perspectives (I'm using that word instead of opinions quite consciously), and a Tasmanian lesbian comic fits that bill. And still, I was not ready. What Gadsby does in the first act is disarm us. She's sweet, she's sympathetic, she's a good soul. And once we're disarmed, she turns her set into a drama. An intervention as much for her as for her audience. As for the world we live in. Touching. Powerful. And the great thing is, she tells us she's going to do this. She goes meta, she explains how her show works, and we still fall for it. All the more willingly. I laughed and I cried, I found it relatable without being able to claim I can know what she's really talking about. In my case, she preached to the converted, but I hope she converted some who were not already like-minded. The show breaks the rules of stand-up comedy, maybe even breaks the contract between comic and audience. But sometimes you need to break the rules. Ready or not, this is that time.

5 years 8 months ago