Hannah Platt @ Pleasance Courtyard
With a sly confidence and light touch, Hannah Platt hits her stride in new show Cult Classic
Hannah Platt's new show grapples with fears of being outdated, now she's no longer the youngest on the bill, but she has no cause to worry: she's beginning to hit her stride and is clearly enjoying herself.
Mental health struggles and identity issues are negotiated with a light touch. Platt's body dysphoria in particular is deftly handled – she doesn't label it as such and the telling feels incidental, off the cuff. She feels more like a bloke, she says, the feminine presentation is just for Arts Council funding. Platt recounts challenging experiences growing up in a similarly unsentimental fashion; a means to an end, with the emphasis firmly upon the jokes. Identity material can risk feeling either didactic or too raw and Platt steers well clear of both.
Gigging in a dead-end town, she encounters a young Goth, and she's struck by the wild combination of bravado and social anxiety reminiscent of her younger self. It's a hot day but Platt notices the tell-tale long sleeves – a disguise she used herself. That's all behind her now, even though she's still working on her anger issues, with a great sequence about raging over lost contact lenses. Her love life's ok, too, and she's even risked a posh girl, although it messed with her pH.
For all the fretting about mortality, Platt's clearly reached a kind of accommodation with herself, and there's a sly confidence in her final callback – which is both sincere and not. Her final ploy is an act of audacious optimism that we can't help but applaud.
Hannah Platt: Cult Classic, Pleasance Courtyard (Attic), until 30 Aug, £12.50-£14.50