If you were lucky enough to catch Hannah Gadsby’s acclaimed 2017 show, Nanette, her swan song before her retirement from comedy, you’ll know that it was totally transcendent. Part-comedy act, part-polemic, part-performance art piece, the fierce, engaging show earned rave reviews from critics and audiences, and won Gadsby the Barry Award for Best Show at the 2017 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

In fact, the show was so popular that after the festival officially closed, MICF added an extra session to satisfy desperate audiences clamouring for tickets. If you missed out, well that sucks, but not so much now that Gadsby has announced a raft of reprisal performances for Nanette in Sydney and Melbourne.

Folks, get your credit cards ready!

In welcome news announced today, Gadsby and Nanette will take the stage at the Opera House in Sydney and the Arts Centre in Melbourne for a handful shows from September to November. The show is a truly brilliant, essential performance, not just for fans of comedy, who will appreciate how Gadsby pushes the boundaries of what’s considered “comedic”, but for all of us who need a wake-up call about Australia’s resistant apathy and bigotry.

I would recommend the show to absolutely anyone but fair warning: as the session I attended earlier this year in Melbourne ended and I walked, eyes prickling with tears, to the exit, I passed rafts of audience members still shocked or weeping in their seats. It is supremely powerful stuff.

However, the show is also funny, fiery and completely absorbing. Gadsby’s deft manipulation of audience tension is truly something to be expeirenced in person — the way she lets tension build and build, refusing to break it with a joke, as is the custom in comedy. Really, this is all just to say: book your bloody tickets! Gadsby announced earlier this year that Nanette would be her final stand-up show ever, so we’re lucky to be getting a reprisal before she moves on to other interests.

Tickets for the Melbourne shows go on sale at 9am this Friday, June 16. Tickets for the Sydney shows go on sale at noon this Friday, June 16.

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Hannah Gadsby – Nanette

Sydney: September 27 – October 8 at Sydney Opera House

Melbourne: November 24 -25 at The Playhouse, Arts Centre