Hannah Platt @ Pleasance Courtyard

With a sly confidence and light touch, Hannah Platt hits her stride in new show Cult Classic

Review by Emma Sullivan | 24 Aug 2026
  • Hannah Platt

Hannah Platt's new show grapples with fears of being outdated, now she's no longer the youngest on the bill, but she has no cause to worry: she's beginning to hit her stride and is clearly enjoying herself.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