Gadsby, Michael – Trump: 3 comedy names that hit in ’18

In 2018, there were three names that seemingly everyone in or around comedy had an opinion about: Hannah Gadsby, Drew Michael and Donald Trump.

The president functioning as a key topic in comedy is far from new — in fact, a case could be made that our reality TV-forged president wouldn’t have it any other way. Trump has a long history of being ready with a Twitter response to mockery regardless of the outside demands of issues foreign and domestic in his job. “Can’t be legal?” he wondered after the final episode of “Saturday Night Live” of 2018 targeted him again, continuing a presidential track record of answering and amplifying criticism of his actions.

Though social media trolls ready to respond with violent threats unfortunately raised the stakes for entertainers who found themselves targeted by the president, it also could constitute a sort of official confirmation of a joke reaching its target — for good and for bad as comics like Samantha Bee and Michelle Wolf weathered media-assisted critiques for going too far.

And while there were many standout stand-up performances in 2018 — John Mulaney, Iliza Shlesinger, Cameron Esposito, W. Kamou Bell and, inexplicably, Adam Sandler — rarely have two performers raised as many questions about the form as Michael and Gadsby. Though Netflix’s deluge of stand-up releases from around the world at times felt like a digital reproduction of the first comedy boom that burst in the 1980s, both of these comics became topics of conversation by taking the open-ended, try-anything legacy of the format that is so lionized in award-winning shows like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” at its word.

The first, and somehow most divisive, of these specials was “Nanette” by Gadsby. A 40-year-old, Tasmanian-born lesbian whose special was filmed at the Sydney Opera House, Gadsby begins in a familiar place with dryly delivered jokes about gender and her background before announcing that she’s quitting comedy, poking holes at the futility of its long-held history of self-deprecation on the way to indicting the form itself.

“I put myself down to seek permission to speak, and I simply will not do that anymore,” Gadsby says early in “Nanette,” before continuing through an artfully constructed set that builds to something furious, cathartic and unlike any other comedy performance.

Where Gadsby took audiences on an unconventional emotional journey, Michael dispensed with the audience entirely and, crucially, the laughter they (ideally) bring. A writer for “Saturday Night Live” who released his debut special on HBO last summer, Michael laid bare much of the self-obsession that’s part of a comedian’s job description.

Directed by fellow stand-up Jerrod Carmichael, the self-titled special appears to exist in a dreamlike psychological void. Michael’s risky special somehow felt more raw and vulnerable even as, onscreen, there was no crowd to win over.