Kiri Pritchard-McLean: Peacock – Oran Mor, Glasgow

Kiri Pritchard-McLean’s stand-up career has continued to flourish as she’s embraced difficult subject matter with grace and sensitivity, while not inhibiting the more sardonic, cynical aspects of her humour. She alludes to some of her previous shows during Peacock – her experience of escaping an abusive relationship; of mentoring a child she suspected of being abused. But when she tells you that her latest offering chronicles the “biggest thing that has ever happened” to her, it’s entirely persuasive. Not least as she had to compel a small army of social workers to sign off on it before she was allowed to present it to audiences.

Since she was six, the Welsh comic has nurtured the idea of having children. But in her 30s, Pritchard-McLean came to realise that she didn’t want to be a biological mother. And in the first coronavirus pandemic lockdown she and her partner began the lengthy process of becoming foster parents, specifically relief foster parents, caring for kids over short-ish, bridging periods until they’re ready to return to their domestic situation.

Clearly, that is admirable and impressive. But Pritchard-McLean has several issues in the retelling beyond her own self-avowed “virtue signalling” and the worthiness of advocating for fostering. Her partner, social workers and the NHS generally, as well as mothers universally and single mothers in particular receive glowing mention in passing.

But she deftly and deliberately makes them truly earn these praises, going out of her way to avoid hagiography. One decidedly odd first aid tutor is the focus of a pretty thorough character assassination. And her early valorisation of motherhood is tempered by a disdain for the preachiness that can come with it, exemplified by the self-aggrandising refrain “speaking as a mother …”

Pritchard-McLean doesn’t spare herself either, cranking up the emotional wringer. Although you never doubt for a second that her story will have a happy ending, her account of the final, invasive judging panel on her and her partner’s suitability for fostering capably expresses the fear of her dream potentially slipping away. She does still get to share a reveal of sorts though, as her previously irreconcilable daytime and nighttime vocations are ultimately brought together in a satisfying manner, as a direct result of her storytelling skill.

Personified by a judgey North Welsh vicar on the fostering panel, Pritchard-McLean has anticipated virtually every obstacle and objection to turning her story into what’s an unprecedented stand-up show. There’s an awful lot of exposition in Peacock about a vital but still unfamiliar process for most people. But she conveys it with an accomplished lightness of touch, with a warm wit that’s at times bawdy and unafraid of sticking the boot into deserved targets, while not shirking from acknowledging the brattier and more frustrating aspects of children.

That said, however, a rather calculated postscript, in which Pritchard-McLean recounts her day looking after a 13-year-old boy, does serve to bring to life the actual minute-to-minute experience of fostering that had hitherto seemed more theoretical in the account.

Resplendent in one of her trademark glittering costumes, a sparkling number that’s eye-catching even by her standards, and with the candid, conversational ease of someone who can effortlessly bring dark, often overlooked topics to wider attention, Pritchard-McLean has every right to strut about Peacock. Delivered with poise, it wears its heart on its sequinned sleeve but retains a consistent and punchy gag rate.

Runs until 7 December 2024