Huw Fyw review – take a sentimental journey around a war veteran’s living room

This play by Tudur Owen tells the story of a curmudgeonly second world war veteran, an unexpected windfall, a clogged toilet and an entire Welsh village’s trip to London in 1994. It has the air of a fable that veers into more anguished terrain. PTSD, generational trauma, social exclusion and the weight of irreconcilable grief are never far from the surface.

One of Wales’s most popular comedians and broadcasters, Owen also stars in the eponymous role (the play’s title translates as Huw Alive). The Welsh-language production’s uncanniness is partly predicated by an expectation that there will perhaps always be an ironic punchline to puncture Huw’s unamused visage. But these seldom come and instead this is a play told with absolute and unironic sincerity, its heart unabashedly worn on its sleeve.

At times, the plotting veers towards the convoluted (listen out for Chekhov’s radio bulletin), but it is cohesively and deftly directed by Steffan Donnelly. The final emotional resolutions aren’t necessarily the ones we were expecting. Mostly set in Huw’s grimy living room – set design by Elin Steele and lighting by Elanor Higgins – it all feels plausibly compact and winningly persuasive. There is a simplicity, perhaps even a naivety, to the drama. Generous sentimentality is presented as a viable and poignant survival strategy that can help keep the horrors, only belatedly revealed, at bay.

Its sentimentality resists the danger of tipping into mawkishness due to four very fine performances. Along with Owen, Leah Gaffey narrates and grounds the action, Owen Alun is quietly devastating in two roles, and one of my favourite moments (as it was when Theatr Cymru’s show first toured in 2025) is when Dafydd Emyr, with a single broad and silly smile, shifts from being a pensioner in a clerical collar to a giddy teenager.

Adding to the uncanniness, one is struck by a strange double nostalgia as the play harks back to the 1990s, which by now perhaps feels as remote as the 1940s might have done back then.

• At Dance House, Cardiff, until 18 April. Then touring until 8 May.