FILLING YOU UP WITH EVERYTHING GOOD IN NORWICH EACH MONTH

Arts > Theatre

Luke Wright - Stand Up Poetry While Sitting Down at Home

by David Vass

30/04/20

Luke Wright - Stand Up Poetry While Sitting Down at Home

Back in mid-March, on Friday 13th (the clue is right there) I went to see Luke Wright perform The Remains of Logan Dankworth at the Corn Hall down in darkest Diss. I don’t suppose anyone that night suspected it would be the last time they would gather communally in a room to watch a show, but a couple of days later the fire curtain came down all over the UK, where it remains. Logan Dankworth is the concluding part of a brilliant trilogy of political monologues that kicked off with Johnnie Bevan, followed by  Frankie Vah, both of which Wright has performed on twitter as part of a forty night marathon of poetry readings from his home in Bungay. Tonight’s session was his forty first – one better than Jesus was his opening quip – and was more in the way of a conventional stand up poetry night.

I’ve always taken the view that performance poetry needs to be seen live, but watched through twitter it worked surprisingly well. Curiously intimate, it felt a little like an evening down the pub, perhaps on one his Inn Crowd nights, something brought to mind by the elegiac musing of a Pub Gig in the Middle of Nowhere (the Star Inn at Waldron since you ask) or the Dylan Thomas influenced Oh England. The former was one of two poems that touched on divorce, and if that sounds like one too many, then bear in mind that The Turning on the Halesworth Road was short, succinct and really rather moving. In any case, we’re all feeling a little maudlin at the moment, are we not? That said, the splenetic fury of Bring Me My Devil was a welcome departure. A howling, angry, indignant protest at having to be locked away,it spoke of our communal impotent rage and that desire to break out and go mad. It was wittily counterpointed by the Hornchurch Commuter; a gentle hint of what most of us will really be getting up to when this is all done. Best of all, was Wright’s sweet tribute to his son’s enthusiasm for reading - his jokey rendition as an East End gangster unable to mask the deep love for Sam that the poem revealed.

The session was wrapped up with a spin on Alice in Wonderland, which was as clever and involving as we’ve come to expect from Wright, but for me some of the most enjoyable bits of this performance – or chat, as I think it would be better described – was listening to him reminiscence about Glastonbury or talk about his kids and the challenges of home tutoring. I confess to coming late to this party, so I’m only guessing the mood of each evening has varied over the previous forty, depending (quite reasonably) on how Luke is feeling. In any event, it’s a testament to the depth and quality of his writing that he’s still bringing work of note to our screens after so many sessions, and that it stands up so well, despite the informal presentation. Luke Wright is a consummate performer and when you see him live he’s always on, even between poems, and that makes for an entertaining theatrical experience. Here, Luke Wright at home was altogether more diffident and reflective, so that this half hour in his company felt more like a jolly natter with a mate on skype, albeit a preposterously talented one.