Hannah Gadsby Wins The Melbourne International Comedy Festival's Top Award

Hannah Gadsby has been awarded the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Barry Award for her critically acclaimed show Nanette. It is the highest honour bestowed by the MICF, in recognition of the year’s most outstanding show.

Nanette was highly lauded for its brutal honesty as Gadsby offered a deeply moving hour of stand-up that jerked at least as many tears from its audience as it earned laughs. Gadsby’s fiercely courageous performance revealed her own experiences of homophobia and violence against women, as well as taking aim at the Safe Schools debate, Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and the ongoing fight for marriage equality. 

The win was even more poignant as Gadsby had announced at the start of this year's MICF that Nanette would be her final show, marking her retirement from comedy. The Music's four-star review of the production described it as "essential viewing", adding: "Gadsby's final show is a gut punch, it's a giant middle finger to a society of victim-blaming, and it's a mic drop on a world that cares more about a rapist's reputation than their unforgivable actions. Nannette feels, and in fact is, important."

Upon receiving her award last night at final Festival Club of 2017, hosted at Max Watt’s, the defiant firebrand also called out recent transphobic comments by Barrie Humphries, whom the Barry Award is named after, saying, “I cannot walk past those comments. I do not agree.” She signed off her acceptance speech by dedicating her win to the late, great John Clarke, as an apparent substitute for Humphries — a remark that was met with thunderous applause. 

Gadsby beat some fierce competition from fellow nominees Sammy J, Anne Edmonds, Damien Power, Richard Gadd and Abandoman. Power, who has been nominated for the Barry three times but has never won, did not go home empty handed. He was awarded the coveted Pinder Prize – so named after MICF co-founder John Pinder – which will see the Brisbane-based comic tour his show Utopia, Now In 3D to the Edinburgh Festival later this year.

The Directors’ Choice Award, selected by MICF chief Susan Proven, went to one of Australia’s brightest young comic talents, Demi Lardner, for her anarchic and brilliantly surreal show Look What You Made Me Do. The Vodaphone People’s Choice Award, which recognises the biggest box office successes of the Festival, went jointly to the Denise Scott and Judith Lucy for their show, Disappointments, and Wil Anderson’s Critically Wil.

The year’s Best Newcomer Award went jointly to Aaron Chen, for his show The Infinite Faces Of Chenny Baby, and Angus Gordon for his Sad Boy Comedy Hour, and The Golden Gibbo, which honours the best independent show of the Fest, went to the superbly innovative immersive performance, A Visit With Nan In A Caravan.

Other winners from this year’s festival, announced earlier this week, were Daniel Reeves, who took out the Class Clown Award for best teen comic, Zac Dyer, the Raw Comedy Award-winner, and Ghenoa Gela who won the Deadly Funny Award for best indigenous comedian.