Invisible to the Naked AI

Thursday, October 15

TAHI Ōtepoti 2026

Te Whare o Rukutia

 

Review by Sam Henderson

For Dunedin comedian and clinical psychologist Nicola Brown, women reaching a certain stage of life inherit a strange superpower: complete invisibility.

As a child, she fantasised about the chaos she might cause if she could turn invisible.

She only had to become a middle-aged woman for that dream to materialise.

Be careful what you wish for.

From failing to attract the attention of automatic doors to oblivious retail staff, “peak invisibility” feels less a superpower and more like becoming redundant.

Still, there are occasional perks.

A low-speed collision with a fellow middle-aged woman brings a welcome upside.

Brown jokes that the accidental bump is barely a tap, more like a Paywave, and the encounter sparks a new friendship over coffee.

Friends can be hard to find, especially when society looks straight through you.

The show’s title plays on modern artificial intelligence, which mangles her publicity photos into a googly-eyed horror and serves up targeted advertisements for vaginal cream.

A different kind of invisibility is explored as Brown describes more than 30 years in a lesbian relationship.

This provides rich comic material, from French farmstay guests assuming she is married to her brother to hospital nurses insisting on a pregnancy test before a hysterectomy.

This prompts her to speculate when on earth she would have the time or inclination for a “spicy, heterosexual, unprotected liaison”, let alone how she would conceive at 52.

The show gains gravitas when Brown addresses severe pelvic nerve damage she suffered during a yin yoga squat.

Chronic pain forced the 1990s aerobics instructor and former Radio One DJ to abandon the adult dance classes she loved, trading movement for sitting on a pile of cushions like an ageing princess.

A joyful finale arrives as Brown reclaims her fitness instructor routines, guiding the audience through a fun communal workout to Queen.

Invisible to the Naked AI is a warm, assured hour of stand-up storytelling.

 

Further shows:

Friday, October 16, 8pm