What an innocent, iconic biscuity treat for many Australians a Tim Tam is. In Hannah Gadsby’s latest, excellent show, Woof! (Abrons Arts Center, to Oct 27) , prepare for that sweet innocence to be left in undignified crumbs, thanks to a brilliantly disgusting joke involving a discarded packet of Tim Tams and something, let’s say if you were cleaning a hotel room, that you never want to find on the floor. At moments during Woof! —as in Gadsby’s other well-known shows, Nanette and Douglas —the laughs are from such familiar comic riffs with a skillful build and then a ricocheting set of payoffs.
Then, in other moments, where the focus turns inwards to matters of identity and grief, or outwards to the state of a world on so many edges, the humor comes spiked with moments of room-stilling seriousness and harder whirls of thought and nuance. Then, with a verbal flash or insouciant irreverence, Gadsby subverts that seriousness with a gasper of a joke. Here, they talk (again) about gender and the act of transitioning—yet not for Gadsby a boilerplate coming out narrative but something far cleverer that defies expectations and invites more questions.
For Gadsby, art and confession are very personal detective work, and the case is eternally ongoing. Gadsby is both a wonderful joke and storyteller—a tilt of the head, a side-eye, a pause can add to moments of extended hilarity—while adept at threading stories and jokes with moments of sharp self-reflection and confession. .
