Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
2018 · Directed by Madeleine Parry, Jon Olb
Original language: English
- comedy
The story
The Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby is taking an anti-comedy stance in her newest special.
What it’s like
A single performer on a bare stage, lit in warm, even theatre light with a plain dark backdrop and almost no set, shot in steady medium and close framing so that every shift in her face and posture reads clearly. The sound is her voice and the audience's laughter, sometimes sharp, sometimes thinning into uneasy quiet, with no score to cushion the turns. Its vibe is raw, intimate and bristling, a live-room confessional that moves between wry and furious. The pacing is deliberate and unhurried, building jokes and then deliberately taking them apart, so the rhythm itself becomes part of the argument. Its emotional register runs from dry, precise humour to hurt and anger, following a woman who sets up expectations of a comedy routine and then refuses them, reckoning openly with trauma, identity and what laughter costs. Intensity is verbal rather than physical: frank talk of sexual assault and homophobia, with no graphic imagery, no violence on screen, and a heavy emotional weight that lands hard. It suits a late, focused evening when you want to be challenged rather than soothed. It is for people who want stand-up that questions its own form, and for viewers drawn to honest, angry, funny testimony about being queer and Tasmanian in a world that kept misreading her.
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