I atten­ded Sam­antha Hannah’s show on Tues­day night with high expect­a­tions, and she did not dis­ap­point.

For those who don’t know her, Sam­antha Han­nah is a Billy T Award nom­in­ee who’s been turn­ing life’s oddit­ies into com­edy for years. In 2018, she garnered a lot of atten­tion with her show How to Find a Hus­band in a Year, a concept born from her real-life attempt to find a part­ner. By 2019, she had fol­lowed it up with How to Find Hap­pi­ness (in a Year), a witty and self-aware explor­a­tion of reclaim­ing hap­pi­ness after grief that earned her a spot in the top 10 for the Funny Women Best Show award. Now, sev­en months preg­nant and bal­an­cing moth­er­hood, work, and stand-up, she brings her latest show, Peek­a­boo!, to the NZ Inter­na­tion­al Com­edy Fest­iv­al, and it’s a sol­id hit.

The premise for this show is that Sam­antha is rein­vent­ing her­self as a tour­ing children’s enter­tain­er. In keep­ing with the theme, the stage is set like an inter­act­ive children’s TV pro­gramme. Her easy­going charm made it com­fort­able for us to join her on a chaot­ic inter­pret­a­tion of children’s enter­tain­ment for adults, com­plete with props, toys, and storytelling that nev­er quite worked out as inten­ded, even put­ting out a New Zea­l­and icon to roast.

Sam­antha is excep­tion­ally tal­en­ted at comed­ic storytelling. She has a way of draw­ing you into the nar­rat­ive with a real gift for craft­ing imagery that pulls you into the moment. For this reas­on, I would say she didn’t really need to sup­ple­ment it with the pho­tos to com­ple­ment the storytelling, as we were already with her. How­ever, I did very much enjoy the videos of her baby Charlie and clips from the home secur­ity sys­tem, which brought hil­ar­ity to the sweet and mundane of every­day life on mater­nity leave.

While the show centres on par­ent­hood, it’s far from exclus­ive. Non-par­ents (like me) will still have a great time. Han­nah has an impress­ive way of being relat­able to any­one in her audi­ence through raw hon­esty, with punch­lines that deliv­er dark and out­rageous twists.

Sam­antha Hannah’s Peek­a­boo! is well-craf­ted and enga­ging, weav­ing per­son­al exper­i­ences into a broad­er com­ment­ary on par­ent­hood, work, and iden­tity without ever feel­ing heavy-handed. She tackled the chaos of bal­an­cing moth­er­hood, a full-time job, and stand-up with humour that felt authen­t­ic and relat­able.

Make sure you get your tick­ets! This is a show that you’ll be guar­an­teed to leave with a smile on your face.

 

 

Review by Nadia Free­man