The last time we saw Ali Wong doing standup, she was delivering an earnest tribute to her husband and their relationship. The final line of “Don Wong,” her 2022 special, went: “And that, single people, is what a healthy marriage looks like.”
Later that year, she got divorced.
In Hollywood, it’s a tale as old as time. But in stand-up, where the parasocial relationship with fans is more intense than ever, this news lit up group chats and created expectations. What would Wong, who has talked about her husband in three specials, add to the fertile genre of comedy about divorce?
Two years after her 2016 breakthrough, “Baby Cobra,” transformed Ali Wong from a veteran but obscure comic into a phenomenon, “Nanette” did the same for Hannah Gadsby. To the extent that Netflix established a reputation for making — as opposed to promoting — stand-up stars, it’s largely because of these two artists, whose new hours present perspectives on fame from such different angles that it almost feels like they’re in conversation.
Gadsby, whose superb show, “Woof!,” is currently running at the Abron Arts Center on the Lower East Side, takes a dark view, worrying that success, and specifically money, has had a corrupting influence. Wong’s latest Netflix special, “Single Lady,” is a juicy, aspirational portrait of celebrity singlehood that exudes optimism.
Walking onstage to songs from pop divas (Beyoncé for Wong; Madonna for Gadsby) and referring to previous specials, they both aim for thematically coherent productions alert to their reputations. But Gadsby, who uses they/them pronouns, considers and confronts their own brand, presenting their experiences as eccentric. Wong takes the comic tack of teasing generalizations out of her experience. Describing the realization in the middle of a breakup that the experience would make a good joke, Wong quipped: “We turn it into lemonade real fast.”
Wearing a flowy white dress, Wong addresses her divorce at the top, saying in a soft voice that she felt “really embarrassed and ashamed.” Embarrassment and shame are fertile comedic territory, but not areas Wong has dug deeply into in the past. She doesn’t here, either, moving quickly to the flip side of a highly public separation: Tabloid coverage, she says, has been a “bat signal” for men.
After being married for 10 years, which closely tracked the course of her fame, Wong said she had “got-out-of-prison energy.” Her dish-filled special packs the fun of reading blind items in the gossip pages. It’s one story after another about incredible sex and irritating follow-ups that might have you googling. Which pretentious movie director responded to being dumped by saying “This feels false”? What about the hunky 60-year-old former pro surfer or the 6-foot-8 Japanese American drummer? As for the actor she’s currently dating, who plays a key role, she pointedly doesn’t name him but suggests her audience already knows. (Hint: His name rhymes with Hill Bader.)
Wong always reminds me of Bill Burr because she seems funniest at her most tense, working through anger. Using that machine-gun delivery, she pops off with some umbrage on light topics but also displays strain. This is a show that at times feels undercooked. There are bits about dating younger men (great sex, poor knowledge of art history) and Midwesterners (bland taste in food) that are less than ambitious. The show has the feel of someone rushing to tell us something.
Her main message is that being a divorced woman in your 40s is better than it’s cracked up to be. It’s a promising take, in part because you rarely hear it. But the punchlines slow down as she zeros in on herself, telling the crowd: “Look at me as an alternative example of how it can be.”
In high school, she says, boys were not into a “charismatic A cup,” but now she finds that “real men know that real sexiness is in on the inside.”
It’s one of many moments where you wonder how fame has disrupted the stand-up process of transforming personal experience into sweeping cultural commentary.
Hannah Gadsby is far more self-conscious about fame’s impact. They refer to the carping that “Nanette” wasn’t really comedy, before spraying out jokes of all kinds: lowbrow sex gags and highbrow literary ones, quick puns and formally complex bits that take an hour to pay off. But Gadsby fesses up: Success has changed them. “Nanette” was “not a plot twist,” they say. “My life is a whole new genre.”
This is a show that digs into big subjects — gender, artificial intelligence, Taylor Swift — but in its own way, it’s as prickly and personal as “Nanette.”
Gadsby asks that many onstage confessions stay in the room. But they return to their ambivalence about fame and wealth. “My bed is comfortable and that keeps me up at night,” they say. Gadsby is shrewd about how audiences don’t like it when stars change without an explanation. But they also aren’t always going to give one.
Despite a reputation for preaching to the converted, Gadsby appears uncomfortable in the embrace of any community. (“Do you know how easy it is to start a cult?”) This is a show deeply skeptical of silos and fandoms.
After describing the wages of fame, Gadsby asks why they still get onstage. Who is their standup for? The answer: Netflix, contractually speaking. “I hate Netflix,” Gadsby says, following with a nuanced chomp on the hand that feeds them.
Gadsby has become a lightning rod. It’s understandable. They made a polemical special that both channeled the fury of the #MeToo moment and used it to attack comedy itself. Then they mocked the art world with a gimmicky Brooklyn Museum show about Picasso and genius. It’s easy to poke holes in some of their points (I have), but one of the many things I admire about their work is a commitment not just to playing with form but also to making comic argument through it.
What’s consistent from their three specials after “Nanette” is structural trickery that doles out information strategically, aiming to satirize and provoke. Gadsby likes to fool audiences, introducing a detail, then exposing it as false. This fits into one of the central themes of this show. Gadsby loathes Netflix less for the content than for the arrogance of the algorithm. Are we humans that easy to figure out?
Wong ends with a sweet if jokeless callback that ties up loose ends. Gadsby finishes by returning to a theme from “Nanette”: rejection of closure. To Gadsby, it’s not just an aesthetic preference, but what makes humans different from machines.
Gadsby illustrates this with a spin on the curtain call that I have never seen before. I won’t ruin the joke, but in a few simple but pointed gestures, they short-circuit the customary ritual between the audience and the artist while introducing a new kind of discomfort. It also presents one more contrast. Ali Wong asks you to look at her for a hopeful alternative. Hannah Gadsby teaches you to look away.
The post Ali Wong Dishes on Life After Divorce. Her Real Subject Is Fame. appeared first on New York Times.