Luke Wright’s Celebrates his Silver Jubilee

Posted on 16th September 2023

It’s hard to believe that Luke Wright, or anyone else for that matter, has earned a living through stand up poetry for the last twenty five years. Once you’ve ticked off John Cooper Clarke, Attila the Stockbroker and Pam Ayres, everyone else still feels like the new kids on the block to me. Yet here we are, celebrating Wright’s Silver Jubilee, a man no less surprised than his audience that he has become an elder statesman of the art form.

For make no mistake, no matter how avuncular his charm, how profane his patter, this is an artist at the top of his game. The evening at the Corn Hall started with his widely acclaimed Edinburgh show, loosely framed around him coming to terms with being adopted at an early age. We got a mix of new work and old, deftly slotted into a narrative arc that explored the ambivalence which he accepts his personal history. I was familiar with some of the work presented, but was nonetheless impressed how, like the poetry equivalent of a juke box musical, he repurposed much of what we heard. The comedy of excess, love letters to his new wife, and the wayward toilet habits of Sir John Betjeman were all touched upon. He even squeezed one of his beloved univocal poems. I still think its flipping tricky, this thing. Wright’s skill with which this limit fills his gigs is thrilling.

After the interval we got extras, and there was much to enjoy in a selection of his stand alone work. Monsters, Abseiling bishops and Gerontophilia all got a look in and very entertaining they were too. It will be, however, the emotional gut punch of the first half’s revelations that will linger in the mind, resonating long after the belly laughs of Judge Crush have died down.