This feels like a huge oversight, but I haven’t seen a lot of Kiri Pritchard-McLean’s work before, even though a) she is everywhere and b) I am a shouty feminist who loves shouty feminist comedy. Catching her Oxford stop on her Peacock tour, I was delighted by her style - rude and lightly transgressive (but, to be fair, only really at the expense of Tories and sex offenders) and lovingly observational. All of this is delivered with bags of charisma, and in a beautiful, completely unexplained, sequinned peacock jumpsuit.
The format of the evening was 20 minutes of crowd work, followed by a support act and a break, and then a 75 minute scripted show. This was a long haul, but the show was so gripping I was surprised at the time when I left.
I cannot for the life of me find the name of the support act online (or remember it), but it’s always a joy to see a newer comedian, and I very much liked her gleefully mucky Northern set, which was tightly crafted and delivered with panache [Editor's note: it's Kathryn Mather, whom you can find online at @kathmathcomedyy and as host of the Historical Hot or Not podcast].
The social mission of the show was absolutely present throughout - this is a show about fostering, both a practical guide to how to do it and a celebration on a good it can go, both to the child and the fosterer. The Oxfordshire fostering team were outside after the show answering questions. The audience was packed with social workers, chuckling at social-work specific jokes. It is also genuinely funny and joyful, and never overly earnest. I learnt some genuinely interesting things about the fostering process, but I didn’t feel like I was at a presentation - I felt like I was at a comedy show. I will probably never foster, and I don’t work in social services, and that was no kind of drawback - but if you did do either of these things, I bet you would feel SO SEEN by this show.
From a feminist perspective, I felt there was a further social good being done here - Kiri is (charmingly, with a light touch) taking a sledgehammer to the nuclear family here. By offering another model of what a family might look like, and by being so joyful about her unconventional setup, she is quietly but deeply challenging the heteronormative assumptions around children and family, but not from a place of anger - from a place of love. This is a show all about love - for the kids, for her partner, and for a society where we look at a child who needs a safe place to stay and we find them a lovely stand up comedian to get them a pizza and look after them for a weekend. Kiri made me feel happy to live in that world. An uplifting and hilarious show.