If you came to Anisa Nandaula’s new show, No Small Talk, expecting to be safe from audience interaction, prepare to be surprised. Nandaula wants to get to know her audience – one by one, if necessary.
From the moment she bounds on stage, Nandaula’s energy is infectious. She is almost aggressively bubbly, her demeanour a counterpoint to the dryness she sees in the Australian sense of humour. She dances across the stage as she welcomes the first row, asking many of them individually for more and more details about their lives. She then moves on to the second row, and the third. She jokes that she’s going to work her way through the whole audience this way and it isn’t entirely a lie: at one point she even reaches an audience member at the very back of the venue, shielding her eyes against the lights as she talks about the difficulties of getting textured hair styled in Australia.
