Kiri Pritchard-McLean made her name with consciousness-raising comedy drawing on her own experiences – of sexism in the comedy industry, of volunteering with disadvantaged kids. Her latest, Home Truths, is a less campaigning affair, about her relationship with, and return to, her native Wales. There’s some terrific stuff here, but I did miss the purposefulness of those previous offerings, that potent mix of personal insight and political edge. A pivot to social commentary – Pritchard-McLean latterly addresses anti-racism and transgender rights – doesn’t quite fill the gap.
The show is at its best when its chronicle of our host’s life in north Wales dovetails with an account of that country’s vexed cultural politics. On the one hand, we learn about Pritchard-McLean’s contested claim on Welshness, because she didn’t grow up speaking the language. On the other, she tells us about “the Welsh knot”, by which generations of children were beaten out of their linguistic patrimony – and (there’s a funny punchline to this one) the relative seniority of the Welsh flag and poo emojis. She’s interesting, too, on the symmetries between the forces that first repelled her from, then attracted her back to, Anglesey.
Before we get there, there’s backstory, about the 35-year-old’s childhood, bullied – for opposite reasons – at her private primary and state secondary schools. There is also, in a show that’s 20 minutes too long, extraneous material about her experiences in sex-ed and home economics class, and a few routines too many about how fat she supposedly is.
The last of these is co-opted to make the point, at the end of a section on racism and “the trans debate” (a phrase she hates), about how hard it is to look at ourselves in the mirror – but how necessary, in a country with a skewed sense of its own moral probity. This routine, lacking the flavour of lived experience that characterised her earlier campaigning comedy, can feel sermonising, and its arguments tendentious. I left respecting Pritchard-McLean’s call-to-arms on behalf of Britain’s abused minorities – among whose number her own people recently counted – while regretting how crudely it’s grafted on to the comedy.