I first encountered the poet Luke Wright a decade ago, when I lived in Oxford and he was performing in a room above a pub. He had already published three collections and was a cult troubadour of Essex, where he grew up. Since then, he’s built up a following that sees a Monday afternoon show sold out. Luke Wright’s Silver Jubilee (Pleasance Dome, ★★★) celebrates the 41-year-old’s quarter of a century in the game – there are lots of riffs about his face on commemorative plates; a televised ceremony narrated by a Dimbleby.
It’s a show that does what Wright excels at: looking outward to explore class and contemporary culture. But his repeated use of the word “belonging” signals new, more personal territory, for it’s also a work about your place in the world. Wright might have grown up middle class in Essex, but he was born on a Hackney council estate in east London and adopted at five weeks old.
