Review of her new stand-up tour, spurning the big issues of the past

This, Hannah Gadsby insists, is a ‘feelgood show’. After the trauma she processed with such intensity in the career-defining Nanette and the misogyny addressed in its agenda-driven follow-up, Douglas, the Australian comic reckons she owes the audience something a bit more positive.

Certainly she’s got a lot to feel good about: the safety-net of financial success, a new marriage to her former producer, Jenney Shamash, and an autism diagnosis that’s helped her come to terms with her feelings of being out of place in this world.

So it’s a playful, even upbeat, Gadsby that rolls on to the Brighton Dome stage. And yes, rolls, as she’s in a wheelchair, having badly broken her leg while on holiday in Iceland. She says the incapacitation has robbed her of the chance to do many previews, given the lack of suitable accessible venues. And, yes, there remain few hallmarks of a work-in-progress here: the odd digression that could be usefully lost or some comedic nuts that need tightening.

But the stories at the heart of Body Of Work – primarily of how she proposed to Shamash, but so much more besides – are strong, and littered with great gags. And while she’s previously flagged up all the comedic techniques she uses, here they remain buried.

It’s not the only change from the approach that made her name. In Nanette, she infamously spurned self-deprecation as a comic device, fearing it normalised the humiliation and marginalisation she was so often been made to feel. Yet in many of the stories in her new show, she’s avowedly low-status, from the clumsiness that lead to the broken leg to her social faux pas when meeting the likes of Jodie Foster or Richard Curtis. Yet there’s a crucial difference in tone, she is now happier with herself, her love and her settled life, which allows her to accept any peculiarities and own any awkwardness.

‘I’m all right,’ she repeatedly tells the audience at the Brighton Dome. ‘Or am I?’ It’s a running joke that she’s putting a lid on any issues or pointed comedy for the sake of a more straightforward, anecdote-driven stand-up show. As she says, there’s so much shit going on in the world, and she’s not best equipped to fix it.

Yet she can’t quite help putting a spin on things. Her pivotal story of how she proposed - not so romantically - comes with an insightful indictment of the heterosexual way of doing things. There are swipes against the likes of Elon Musk and, notably, a ‘biting-the-hand-that-feeds-me’ condemnation of Netflix for defending Dave Chappelle’s transphobic, homophobic and misogynistic material as merely a joke. If this show ever becomes a special on the platform, like its predecessors, she’ll repeatedly tell viewers to cancel their subscription. Just a joke of course.

Yet the social commentary generally takes a back seat, as she strives to be more like her father and ruffle no feathers. ‘Once he declared that hummingbirds were impressive,’ she recalls. ‘But other than that he steers clear of politics.’ But he can’t tell a story for shit – which is where the apple has fallen far from the tree.

Over 100 or so minutes Gadsby shares stories of old relationships gone wrong to contrast with the more effortless symbiosis with Shamash, or ‘Jenno’ as she calls her. Hearing about loved-up contentment isn’t the most promising comedy territory, given audiences would obviously much rather hear of misery.

But by playing up their differences – rural Australian vs Californian sophisticate – and subtly reminding us that her life has rarely been plain sailing, Gadsby actually pulls off that thing she insists she hates: the uplifting romcom.

» Hannah ​Gadsby: Body Of Work is back at Brighton tonight, Edinburgh on Sunday and at the London Palladium next week. Hannah ​Gadsby​ tour dates

» Hannah ​Gadsby interview: 'It doesn't matter how much money or success I have, every day I'm on the struggle bus a bit'

Review date: 10 Mar 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Brighton Dome