Hannah Gadsby: Nanette

I had never heard of Hannah Gadsby before so this was a pretty random choice. A happy choice.

I'll give you some context: I have a fairly busy life, with two children under five, a job and a half, a boyfriend and a divorce in progress. I had not had a night alone in a long time, and, let me tell you: I was excited about MY time alone in MY house. Hannah was the perfect date for the occasion.

I also identify with "tired". Other than that I am an heterosexual white woman in her prime. This should be irrelevant but reading the other comments seems necessary to mention, because NO, this content does not appeal only to a particular community as some want you to believe. I am a woman, but the male attention I received throughout life, being heterosexual, feminine, said attractive, was quite different from Hannah's experience. One experience does not invalidate the other.

This content is about connection and Hannah makes us feel connected.

There is a less colorful community in which Hannah and I are together. I'm also a funny person, and I've been using humor all my life to deal with my frailties. It's something that has been in my mind lately, the need to be vulnerable to create real connections, something I struggle to achieve, I'm still working on it sitting in my world protected with walls of jokes that I'm not yet ready to knock over. and so I bow before Hannah Gadsby because, wow, this was bold and brave and we, from this other community, needed it. Thank you Hannah.

It starts off a stand up special but takes a turn for the serious. Hannah is a strong and powerful woman, weaving the through comedy, women's issues, lgbqti issues and modern art. Don't expect to laugh the whole way through but you will walk away feeling feelings.

A wonderful show about comedy and about jokes. But it is not comedy and it is not jokes. And that's not an insult! It's a beautiful and moving performance but we should take it for what it is and appreciate that Ms Gadsby is doing her OWN, more difficult to categorize thing. Putting her in the same category as, I dunno, Ali Wong, is a disservice for them both.

I expected to laugh and I did, very much. I didn't expect to be so moved. This Story is important. I am so grateful that she had the strength to say everything that she did. I really needed to hear it and I think the world does too.

I would have gladly given this a higher rating if was properly placed in the genre to which it belongs.

As a humanities lecture with some forgettable humor tossed in, it's outstanding. As a character study of a severely broken woman it's fascinating. As a standup comedy show it's a dismal failure. Her material includes competent but hardly memorable jokes that go on for way too long.. Her ramblings about men didn't offend me -do people think this is the first time our gender has heard any of this? It's hardly the groundbreaking work it pretends to be.

I've noticed some unfortunate things from reading the reviews on this, though. If you're only mildly entertained by dull, razor thin feminist baiting tripe you're some sort of incel. Women aren't above criticism, and if you're going to touch on this subject you don't get to call anyone who disagrees with you a misogynist and leave it that. It's too simplistic. And it takes away all accountability for your failure to entertain.

The message I took away from this was unfortunate - men want comedy (most of the top tier comedians are male), women want validation. And that's truly a sad, cynical attitude to walk away with. She makes a better public speaker preaching to the choir because, as a comedian, she does little to dispel the tired stereotype that women aren't funny.

Thank God for Kathleen Madigan.