A most unusual stand-up show in which the comic examines her darkest moments and deepest beliefs

Hannah Gadsby’s hour-long live-from-Sydney comic stand-up show, Nanettte (2018), on Netflix, is, at the end, a knockout: A must unusual comic gig that mixes humor – much of it about Gadsby’s coming out and life as a Lesbian in her mid-30s or so – with some unusual comic riffs – who’d have thought you could work into a standup show a long and very funny series of riffs on art history (her college major, as she notes). But at the center of the program are HG’s heartfelt and powerful thoughts about differences, oppression, repression, suppression, male-white-privilege, and the need and urge to “fit in.” Recounting what’s in this show, however, inevitably gives the wrong impression: It’s not a harangue or a guilt trip, through there are many pointed remarks about male cruelty and violence. Rather, the program does what much great literature does or tries to do: Gives us access to the consciousness or the consciousness or another. HG’s holds nothing back –and at its most poignant, and original, moments, the show becomes her public struggle to ascertain he value of her work: She says several times that she has to give up stand-up comedy, as it’s not the right or the best vehicle for her to communicate her ideas and beliefs. The show examines its own premises and its own worth: She notes, correctly, that comedy is a two-stroke engine (my metaphor), set-up and punchline – and that doesn’t give her sufficient space to tell her story and express her deepest beliefs. So we see on stage an artist wrestling with, struggling with, the adequacy of her material and with her very being. (Evidently, HG has not given up yet on her milieu, as she has another hour-long special due this week on Netflix.)