Hannah Gadsby: The Exhibitionist

A couple of times in the course of an entertaining but under-developed hour of comedy, Hannah Gadsby hints that this is a show with a mission. (That is, other than making people laugh and earning a few quid.) Gadsby has beef with the internet. She shared a selfie recently, only to see it attract a wave of hateful comments. More broadly, she laments the power the visual image has lost in an era when images proliferate endlessly. This thread culminates in a peculiarly muted section in which Old Masters tick past on a screen while a cover of Hurt' by Nine Inch Nails plays.

But most of the show consists of Gadsby (a laconic Aussie who looks appropriately professorial with whiteboard and laser pointer) talking us through a succession of images. Some are unflattering pictures from her childhood which she talks about self-deprecatingly; others are Old Masters.

Gadsby knows her art history but she doesn't extract much comic value from these. She scrolls through masterpieces pointing out amusing things – a mighty codpiece here, an unnaturally long arm there. This is good for a giggle, but the problem with a show which revolves around contriving witty captions for images is that no single human could ever come up with wittier captions than those produced by the hive-mind of the internet, Gadsby's nemesis. This threatens to undermine another segment, in which she pokes fun at all those pictures of a half-dressed Vladimir Putin doing virile things like aiming a big gun or riding a magnificent steed. What's left to say about these pictures? Thankfully, Gadsby raises her game at this point, puncturing the photos' pomposity with two far more inventive comedic tactics. More of that, please.