Body of Work is “a feelgood show”, Hannah Gadsby tells us. Its predecessors, the smash hits Nanette and Douglas, shot the Tasmanian to stardom – but weren’t all smiles. Her latest, recounting romance and recent marriage to her producer Jenney Shamash, arrives with a lighter, looser vibe. Even looser than intended, perhaps. Gadsby enters in a wheelchair, having broken her leg on a trip to Iceland. That poleaxed her European tour, and restricted recent gigs to venues with adequate disability access. So “I haven’t done this very much”, she tells us: the show might be a little rough and unready.
By the end, as Body of Work ambled towards the two-hour mark, I could see Gadsby’s point. In a show that makes much of the distinction between storytelling and merely listing things that happened (Gadsby’s dad is apparently a poor raconteur), I missed the structural rigour of her earlier offerings. And yet, this is still a delightful set, the more so for finding the 44-year-old in such happy, playful form. Gadsby hates romcoms, she tells us – but delivers one here, after a fashion, covering her courtship with “Jenno”, flashing back to her relationship history (drolly characterised less as “baggage”, more as a tangle of tote bags), then depicting the pair’s life as a couple, with Jenno smoothing the autistic, perimenopausal, post-famous Gadsby’s path into domesticated middle age.
