The comedian reconsidering her life in light of new parenthood is a genre unto itself these days; in the last few months alone, I’ve seen Suzi Ruffell and Travis Jay deliver sets that do something similar to Harriet Kemsley’s. Ostensibly, Honeysuckle Island poses the question: what can Kemsley do to make the world a better – less sexist, less shameful – place for 10-month-old Mabel to grow up in? But that framework never entirely convinces, in a show whose effervescent host seems more excited by the next blue gag or #NoFilter overshare than by her doing-it-for-my-daughter premise.
Fair enough: her smutty comedy is rendered with a winning delinquency, with Kemsley the overgrown woman-child and all these rude words and ideas her shiny new toys. Recent pregnancy and childbirth offers a treasure trove of material to a comic who loves to mock idealised femininity, and her own distance from it. So here we find the manic 35-year-old comparing childbirth to anal sex, canvassing the audience’s sexual health and inducing anaphylactic shock in pursuit of the full-lipped, Kim Kardashian beauty ideal.
