Hannah Gadsby: Nanette

Last year Hannah Gadsby and John Robins were announced as the first ever joint winners of Edinburgh's Best Comedy Show. I was familiar with Robins’ work because I took a punt on him when I went to see 2009 debut hour Skinny Love. Following this, I went to see his subsequent shows, making him a regular date in my Edinburgh diary. However, I hadn’t heard of Gadsby before her victory.

Gadsby and Robins with the big prize.

Native to Australia, Gadsby has done most of her work there, only relocating to Edinburgh for the arts festival. I don’t really know how her name passed me by, as on researching her it’s clear she’s been gaining plaudits for quite some time. Last year’s show Nanette though is her breakthrough – perverse, because her tour-de-force performance is about quitting comedy. Fortunately in agreeing for Netflix to document her valediction, Gadsby has preserved this hour in time for comedy fans around the world to enjoy.

Having missed her show at London’s Soho Theatre, I was thrilled when Netflix announced they would be screening it. It’s not often I look forward to a Netflix comedy special; there are so many that it’s hard to distinguish trash from treasure. With Gadsby's special though I'd done my homework. I read the articles about it oscillating between comedy and tragedy; was intrigued by the idea of it being a meditation on stand up; and loved the irony of someone setting fire to the pedestal they were put on. I was won over before it started.

Despite reading about her, I'd never seen any clips of Gadbsy. I was coming at her cold. Initially, she struck me as diffident. She shuffles on stage, adjusts her glasses and speaks softly without oratory. The ‘opening ten’ is her introduction. She tells us where she is from: Tasmania (‘little island floating off the arse end of Australia’). Then, there’s a self-deprecatory joke about her androgynous appearance: the small town don’t mind her from afar, seeing her as a ‘good bloke,’ but when they come closer their prejudice moves with them, labelling her ‘a trickster woman.’ These jibes about appearance and small towns are in most comedians’ locker and are hardly remarkable. Whereas other comics would serve up these topics for a full show though, Gadsby uses them as hors d’oeuvres for her later, more refined dishes.

As the minutes clock by the piece gets more personal. We’re told how in Tasmania it was illegal to be gay up until 1997 (remember it wasn’t until last year that Australia voted in favour of same-sex marriage). In possessing an Art History degree, Gadsby proves herself an adept painter of words. Her recollection of watching a small TV in her small town in her small living room serves as a metaphor for the small-minded society that surrounded her. The fact that in that small world she encountered ‘her people’ for the first time in an ostentatious parade of spectacle - Sydney's Mardi Gras - is a juxtaposition both tragic and funny. Her rumination of “where do the quiet gays go” when watching is hilarious – but profound too, highlighting how even in a marginal group Gadsby feels different.

At about the twenty-minute mark, Gadsby pulls the rug from under us. Those self-deprecating jokes, so well received in her opener, are now challenged. She tells us that she needs to stop doing comedy because self-deprecation isn’t about ‘humility but humiliation.’ To be given a chance to speak as an outsider she had to immolate herself, and she’s not going to do it anymore. 

Being a huge comedy fan, I’m surprised I’ve never thought of this. 

If you’re a comedian from a marginal group, the only way the audience lets you in is if through self-ridicule. Frequently, the comic is of low-status: the audience laughs at the failures that befall them. However, if you’re a comic that looks and sounds different, then you have to find the trap door and take that status even lower. If you go high, then you’ll lose the audience: why has this 'weirdo' got confidence? The only path to success? Go low.

These thoughts on comedy are put on the hob to be returned to later. Now, she’s onto gender and how hers confuses people. Again, she demonstrates a keen eye for visual images when she takes umbrage at parents who feel the need to put pink headbands on bald babies. (‘Would you put a bangle on a potato?) Like all intelligent comedians, she knows how to use a daft analogy to slaughter sacred cows. Later, she manipulates low incident for profound result when telling us of a flight attendant's embarrassment at mistaken her for a man. She describes how she enjoys the ‘holiday’ of being a white man, going into a comic assault on the patriarchy.

In action.

With her surreal collisions of mundane and mighty, daft and serious, low and high, Gadsby knows how to write jokes. Soon she’s back to the hob reflecting on the nature of these jokes, considering their construction. Comedy necessitates tension, she tells us. The great comic doesn’t just know how to make an audience laugh, but how not to make them laugh. Comedy is as much about the space in between the jokes (the set-up) as it is about the joke itself (the punch-line). Good comics know when to hold; know when to let go.

Some people might watch this show and dismiss it because it isn’t a heaving hysterical laugh-fest. For me, comedy is a broad church. There are times when I want a minister to raise the roof, serving up a bombastic sermon. There’s other times when I want to parable that’s thought-provoking and educative – sure, funny as well. The reason so many people in their formative years loved Monty Python is because they were funny school teachers. Songs about Aristotle, The Spanish Inquisition sketch, animations on Botticelli – laughter that you may not understand at the time; but when researched you laugh again with new understanding. The thing I love about Gadsby’s second half is she references people I’ve never heard mentioned in comedy: van Gogh and his Sunflowers, Picasso and Cubism, the Renaissance painters too. Aware of keeping the comedy train on track, she refers to those Renaissant guys as ‘Turtles’ and van Gogh as bad at networking; however, she balances this with a critique on artists – again the pan bubbles.

The Python's liked having fun with art too.

Towards the conclusion Gadsby isn’t diffident in her voice, but confident. In shedding her comedic skin, she becomes a butterfly. Free to fly, no longer constrained by comedy’s parameters, she boils over, taking flight, taking aim at those who have silenced her. Initially, her rhetoric is redolent of Network’s ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore,’ but this recedes into a kind of catharsis that we pray is achieved.

By the end Gadsby’s Nanette has gone from being a set of contrivances to a story with truths. If this show is her funeral to jesterdom, then it isn’t a dirge but a Viking burial. At the curtain closure she is transformed: a Valkyrie floating down river, her show beside her: a bright, burning offer to the Gods. Hopefully what lies around the corner is happiness - it would be thoroughly deserved.

Nanette is available on Netflix

Greetings from Bury Park

Last month I saw a feature on the news for a British film. Set in 1980’s Luton to a Bruce Springsteen soundtrack, Blinded by the Light is to be produced by Gurinder Chadha and Paul Mayeda Berges, the team behind global smash, Bend It Like Beckham. Based on the memoir of Sarfraz Manzoor, it tells the story of a Muslim teenager's devotion to all things Springsteen and the subsequent cultural problems this brings.

Now as someone who has taught in Luton, lives in Dunstable, who loves The Boss, my interest was well and truly piqued. The next week I went down to the library and reserved my copy of Manzoor’s memoir, Greetings from Bury Park, a wry homage to Springsteen’s debut album, Greetings from Ashbury Park.

The Springsteen album.

Having secured the book, I’ve spent the last few days voraciously reading it. Manzoor’s life really resonated with my own. Unlike Manzoor, I’m not a Muslim; however, like him, I am a second-generation immigrant. My dad moved to Britain from Sri Lanka in the 70’s where he worked a number of menial jobs, before finding regular work as an engineer. As a Hindu he risked upsetting his family by marrying a white woman, my mum, a nurse from Dorset. Their marriage begot my brother and myself: Anglo-Asian kids at a time when there weren’t many. At our local primary children were either from Pakistan or England. More often than not, the two nationalities didn’t lock horns, but there wasn’t much mixing either. When a new Mosque was proposed white families (some from my school) put banners in their window, blazoned ‘No To Mosque.’

Despite our brown skin, my brother and I had few problems. The fact we had Western names probably helped. Also, we weren’t religious, which meant our lives weren’t so different to the majority English cohort. Our heritage didn’t inform our language – we didn’t speak Tamil, and it didn’t inform our clothing – we wore football strips. From the sound of our names and the sound of our tongues, we appeared English. It was only inside the home that we did anything that could be considered Sri Lankan. At Christmas we would have Sri Lankan relatives over, where my mum, brother and me would sit slack-jawed as Tamil talk went on around us. On Sundays we didn’t sit down for a roast, but gathered for rice and dhal, tempering the spice with natural yoghurt. My dad would eat with his hands, whilst the rest of us would opt for cutlery. In many ways being a Sri Lankan was a spectator sport for us: we would turn out at the weekend to support the team, then go home, take off the colours, and be English again for the working week.

Manzoor though is more embedded in both worlds than I was. His father moved over from Pakistan for a better life. Unable to afford his wife and families passage, he lived without them for many years. It wasn't until 1974, fourteen years after his marriage, that he made the call for them to come over. Living in Bury Park, a predominantly Asian area, Manzoor’s father made the decision for his children to be educated at a predominantly white school. This may have been the defining moment in his children's lives. Occupying a space alongside white Brits meant they were susceptible to influence. For Muslims ritual, religion and family is the thing. These principles aren’t shared by the English. For the English, religion is something to think about on a Sunday and forget about for the rest of the week. For the English, family is about the people who live within your walls, as for the rest of them, well we’ll see them at Christmas. For the English duty and obligation is earmarked with a resigned shrug; it isn’t a guiding philosophy to live by day by day.

I really love this front cover.

With this culture clash it’s unsurprising that Sarfraz’s identity is annexed by British rule. On a trip to Pakistan he unwinds from the exhausting family meet-and-greet merry-go-round by listening to his Steve Wright In The Afternoon tapes. More evidence of his assimilation is his predilection for Western women. Instead of bejewelled Asian girls, he favours ones without decoration, preferably with nothing on. Consequently, he scours the local library perusing Amateur Photographer magazine for nudes. (Writing that, I’ve just remembered my dad used to be a subscriber. Dirty old man!)

However it isn’t until he attends college that he experiences the thing that paradoxically gives and takes his identity. Tied in a turban, a Sikh lad has a pair of headphones on. His eyes are closed; he’s immersed in sound. Sarfraz asks him what he’s listening to. The lad tells him, The Boss. At this point, Sarfraz has only heard of ‘Born in the U.S.A,’ which he thinks is alright. Amolak isn’t satisfied with this ambivalence. You’re either with Springsteen or you’re against him. Agnosticism will not do. Springsteen is The Word; Amolak his Disciple; he will turn this heathen to heaven and him experience the wonder that is Mr New Jersey. Soon Sarfraz is sending off for bootleg copies of Springsteen albums and writing his favourite lyrics down. It’s the start of a fanaticism that would lead to a book, an Edinburgh show and now a movie.

Each chapter of Greetings ... begins with a Springsteen lyric in the same way some books have religious epigraphs to give their work weight and direction. Throughout the course of his life, Springsteen is Sarfraz’s guiding light. Sons of immigrants, born into the working class, the two have something in common. The idea of commonality is what makes Springsteen endure. Where other pop stars find fame in elevated otherness, The Boss achieves popularity in staying true to his roots. He has the restless spirit of the small town: an urge to break out of the straightjacket of conservative values and find freedom on the great American freeway. In the book Sarfraz explains, ‘if religion was about answering the profound questions of how to live, Bruce Springsteen gave me more profound answers than Islam.’ An old text can feel just that: old; whereas pop lyrics often feel contemporary, urgent and relevant. Personally, I know I’ve learnt more about love and life through inlay lyrics than I did through my Catholic school upbringing. It’s this love of Springsteen that takes Sarfraz around the world, watching his hero, even meeting him on three occasions.

Never meet your heroes - unless they're The Boss. (Pic. courtesy of The Guardian)

The trouble Sarfraz has in his life is how to square the circle: How can someone 'born to run' walk with Allah? Is it possible to experience the love felt in pop music through a culture that arranges marriage? How can you be a getaway when social-cultural roadblocks block your way? The chapter ‘Better Days’ is particularly strong at documenting how difficult love is when it comes into contact with the shirt pull of history.

The thing I really loved about this memoir was that it was a profound page-turner. It made me reflect on my own life and how it may have been different. Undoubtedly, I have lost something in the sea-saw of my identity being tilted towards Blighty (there’s relatives I can’t converse with; I know little of my dad’s Hinduism; I don’t truly appreciate the struggle my family endured in conflict), but selfishly I feel less muddled. My devotion to education is Sri Lankan. I believe my work ethic is too. But I haven’t had to face the dilemmas Sarfraz has in balancing two worlds. The victory of the book is no one is truly to blame. It’s easy to stand in judgment and blame his parents for his inner-conflict, but that’s reductive and denies the complex social structures that inform their views.

Given the book was published in 2007 I was keen to find out how Manzoor’s life turned out. Typing his name into Google, I was relieved to read about him finding love and happiness. I really rooted for Manzoor in his memoir and I think you will too. I’m really excited about the forthcoming film because it will shine a spotlight on the immigrant experience and the challenges young people face in being dutiful to their parents and loyal to their hearts; but also in the hope it will turn people towards the original source material. Greetings from Bury Park shares themes with its inspiration - dreams, love and escape. It's a Springsteen album without the guitars. So here's what you should do: take out your headphones, put The Boss' album on, lie back and read these lyrics about a man Born in Pakistan but very much made in England.

Greetings from Bury Park is available now.

Blinded by the Light will be in cinemas next year.

   

Matilda: The Musical

In the state sector world of teaching there are few perks. Boardroom dealmakers don’t put on a Christmas do for you; a summer send-off involves ‘bringing a dish’ and break time milk is credited to staff bank accounts. Sure, you get a lot of holiday, but much of that is spent scrabbling under the sofa for your mortgage repayments. There is one perk though to being a teacher: school trips. Yes, it involves children, which is a disappointment. On the plus side though, you get to see productions for nothing. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. The parent 'respite tax' for a night off is a theatre ticket for this guy (pointing at myself). Seems like a fair deal. So while you parents have your fun while the kids are out, turning your homes into queasy speakeasy swingers clubs, I'm out watching great art.

This week I went to see Matilda: The Musical, which I’ve wanted to see for ages. The reason for this is two-fold: the first is Roald Dahl. As a child my mum would sit beside mine and my brother's bunk and read his stories to us. In my first year as a teacher I taught Dahl’s early years memoir, Boy, and seeing the joy it brought children made me nostalgic for the joy he brought me. The second is Tim Minchin. Minchin, a musical-comedian, is the lyricist behind the musical. A few years ago The Girl and I went to The Old Vic to see his take on Groundhog Day; the songs were stunning in both brains and accessibility. 

Roald Dahl dressed as Bobby Charlton.

In stand-up circles musical-comedians are often derided: often they choose well-known songs, barely re-working the lyrics, which culminate in some Pavlov’s dog noodling guaranteed to raise applause. Minchin is nothing like this. Ironically for a virtuosic pianist, he doesn’t think in black and white. His songs are imbued with a variety of hues: he can do melancholic, nostalgic, romantic, satirical and edgy. His piano isn’t a punch-line prop, but a background set-up for jokes to gestate. 

I was dead excited about going.

Matilda begins with ‘Miracle,’ a ‘homage’ to the miracle of birth. The inverted commas because Matilda’s parents aren’t so happy with their arrival. For Mrs Wormwood it’s an inconvenience: she should be at a dance championship getting 10’s from judges, as opposed to judgement from doctors for maternal indifference. For Mr Wormwood it’s a swindle, a swizz, "where is its ‘thingy?" after all. I mean, he’s heard of this liability being taken with other parents before, but for him, a self-made man of used cars, shouldn’t he be leaving the forecourt with a man made of his own? As other children recall their parents tributes, (‘My daddy says I'm his special little guy. I am a princess, And I am a prince. Mum says I'm an angel sent down from the sky,’) a now grown Matilda laments,

My mummy says I'm a lousy little worm. My daddy says I'm a bore. My mummy says I'm a jumped-up little germ, That kids like me should be against the law, My daddy says I should learn to shut my pie hole. No one likes a smart-mouthed girl like me. Mum says I'm a good case for population control. Dad says I should watch more TV.

(Miracle, Matilda: The Musical)

The fact this is delivered with a straight bat makes it even more hilarious. I know it’s a cheap trick but are there many funnier things than putting adult ideas – in this case sterilisation – into a child’s mouth? It isn’t just the lyrics that are well juxtaposed, but the play script by Dennis Kelly too. When Mr Wormwood sees his daughter reading, he pronounces, “That’s not normal for a five-year-old. I think she might be an idiot.” Cut to Matilda: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Matilda isn’t just reading; she’s inhaling the great works of literature. She isn’t an idiot, but a genius. Her TV-loving family are the cartoon catchphrases to her layered elegance. Fortunately, she finds refuge in the library.

The library scenes are a Kelly conception rather than a Dahl one. Like Hamlet has a play within a play, Kelly’s Matilda has a story within a story. An argument between her mother and father gets Matilda thinking. Her dad defines himself as an 'escapologist' for getting his wife out of financial scrapes; her mum replies how she ‘must be an acrobat,’ given how she maintains the house. (“Dinners don’t microwave themselves, you know!”) Hearing two tremendously dull people use circus language is the inspiration needed to make Matilda's brain go light bulb. On entering the library, it’s clear she is pub regular at the prose joint. The librarian asks Matilda for a story. The one she tells is of an escapologist and an acrobat; a couple who live and work in trust, catching one another from falling, soaring together to new heights. This is the stuff of painful wish-fulfilment: Matilda wants her parents to act in poetry, not argue in graffiti. Throughout the musical we come back to Matilda in the library, adding chapters to her story, inspired by earlier events, prefiguring later ones. The handling of this magical realism is beautifully conceived with shadow puppetry utilised to create the carnival scene.

Matilda tells her story.

Those of you who are still reading this (who are you people?) will perhaps be wondering when I’m going to bring up Miss Trunchbull. Even more than Matilda, she is the take-away character of the story. Pam Ferris’ rendering of her is marvellous in the film version scaring children worldwide. In the musical she possesses the same dictatorial threat. The Wormwords see her as the Bookfinder General, one that will rip literature from their daughter’s brain, instilling instead the values of fact and discipline. She'll be the educative osteopath that'll straighten their daughter out. 

In going to school Matilda and the other early learners are greeted by the bigger boys and girls. They are told in no uncertain terms that what they’re entering is not the palace of wisdom, but a gothic prison. The ‘School Song’ they sing is a work of wonder – a wonder that I missed. Because I’m short-sighted, dim-witted and tin-eared, I didn’t pick up on the genius of the song. I noticed letters were being put in the school gates but I didn’t get they corresponded to the letter being referenced in the song. It wasn’t until I got home and The Girl said, “How good is that alphabet song?” that I realised what I had missed. She told me that each line references a letter in the alphabet, and played back the song to illustrate.

Here it is:

And so you think you're A-ble
To survive this mess by Being a prince or a princess.
You will soon (C) see there's no escaping trageDy. 
And Even if you put in heaps of eFfort, 
You're just wasting enerGy, 
'Cause your life as you know it is "aitcH"-ent history. 
I have suffered in this Jail, I've been trapped inside this (K) cage for ages, 
This living 'eLl. But if I try I can remeMber,
(School Song, Matilda: The Musical)

It makes you appreciate why Minchin was the one they turned to when looking for a lyricist. He has a preternatural talent for words, just as Matilda does. And just as Matilda is understood better by her own peers than adults, so it appears does Minchin. Whilst all the children clapped wildly in unison as each letter was put down, I thought, “Yeah, it’s good, but it’s hardly the best song.” On reflection I’ve learnt that sometimes children know best.

My favourite song though is the Act Two opener ‘When I Grow Up.’ A few months ago I saw Minchin perform it on Front Row, BBC2’s flagship culture show that has the ratings of the dodo population. I was spellbound by the performance. You would be hard-pressed to find a song that articulates better 'the child experience.' Frequently as a child you feel powerless. You’re forced to endure the fallout of adult conflict. Kept in the dark about the mysteries of death and divorce. Told to keep your why’s and wherefore’s to yourself. It’s no wonder that some children want to grow up. To take control of their own lives and destinies. Minchin’s song doesn’t quite deal in this dark material, but it’s a painful reminder that childhood isn’t all cartwheels and bottle rockets. For those like me who were blessed with a wonderful childhood, it’s melancholic, as it makes you wonder why a child would wish those years away. It’s a staggering work of beauty.

So in a story about the fecklessness of parents, I want to say ‘thank you parents.’ It’s because of you that I got to see Matilda: The Musical free of charge. Yes, the teachers lot may not always be the proverbial land of Miss Honey, but when you get to see wonderful productions it’s not all (Trunch)bull either.

Matilda: The Musical is on tour now.