Luke Wright : Stay-at-Home Dandy, Underbelly, Cowgate, Edinburgh Fringe

Performance poetry is a term that puts a lot of people off.  It shouldn't, or at least not when it's the performance and poetry of someone with charisma, a mastery of words, an eye for absurdity and a cutting sense of humour.  Someone like Luke Wright.

He's a compelling presence on stage, a foppish dandy bursting with energy and life.  Yet much of his subject matter is the mundane, the minutiae of his other role as a stay at home dad looking after two small boys in a small Suffolk town.  There are tales and verses about the school run, the other parents, his own father, the characters around the town, and the occasional political rant.  He rages against the injustices and pomposities of life whilst displaying an intimate love of his life as a father.

All of this delivered in soaring passionate language, using a vocabulary and structure and rhythm and beat and style to make any pop song seem vapid.  Don't let the word 'poetry' put you off seeing this man, this is pure entertainment, engaging and unpretentious.

Highly recommended.

Luke Wright : Stay-at-Home Dandy is on in Underbelly, Cowgate at 18.20 until the 30th.