Sporting an asymmetric blond coiffure and dressed in frock-coat and waistcoat complete with fob watch, the baby-faced Luke Wright takes to the stage as himself, the New Romantic dandy of the title. Despite this appearance, he is no self-centred aesthete, but a virtuoso wordsmith with a sincere and sensitive social conscience. I had not previously read Wright’s texts, but it certainly works in this live form as performance poetry, the content of the verse brought to life by the animated style of his delivery, full of nuance, passion and humour.

His set takes the form of a satirical take on the conformities of suburbia, mainly comprised of poetic portraits inspired by characters he has met in his domestic surroundings. There are moments of spiky rancour, such as in ‘His little princess gets what his little princess wants’, but also moving tributes to the disenfranchised and inarticulate, as in his tale of Tracey the tollbooth teller.  Through it all, Wright comes across as warm-hearted humanist whose finely observed portraits reveal a deep interest and empathy for people and personal politics.

The patter between poems is also warm and assured, a constant stream of anecdotes and observations. Either he’s a man simply never lost for words, or it’s so very well practiced and prepared it comes across as spontaneous improvisation. In this sense the production has a quality of solid professionalism, lending confidence that we are in safe hands. Overall it is a show full of intelligence, charm and passion and that was clearly much appreciated by a packed audience of apparent devotees.