Cynical Ballads

An evening with Luke Wright is like curling up in front of the fire with a good book, a bottle of wine - and the occasional flying ember. He is young, charming and equipped with beautifully observed ballads delivered with the verve and sass of a rap singer. Wright is a natural performer, confident and skilled at bringing the audience into the darkly comic worlds he has created in his ballads. With each story, Wright's words are accompanied by Sam Ratcliffe's illustrations, which give a wonderfully scruffy, fairytale quality to the performance.

Wright's stories are about current-day 'broken Britain', a term that Wright finds problematic. Commentators like to use that term to describe modern-day Britain's economic and social woes, though Wright points out that things weren't exactly great back in the Victorian era either. It's interesting that by using the traditional ballad format, Wright's stories take on a Victorian tone. He, like Dickens, focuses on characters that are a bit odd, overlooked, trod upon but who try their luck with what little resources they have.

Wright's first ballad describes a night out in Britain with its night-club dwellers, drug takers, and pub crawlers. His words duck and weave through narrow, dark streets and the last train of the night, without becoming too depressing.

His stories are about a schoolyard ruffian rejected by the pretty girl; hypocritical politicians and their privileged sons; and children waiting for mum and dad to die so they can take a few more steps up the social ladder. Two of the most moving ballads are about a chip shop proprietor's sad marriage breakdown, and a retired war hero who is robbed in his old age.

In between ballads, Wright gives a quick poetry lesson, and has a bit of fun at the expense of Keats and Yeats.

The definition of a cynic is 'someone who doubts or denies the goodness of human motives' and often sneers at others. Wright's ballads had much more heart than this. A refreshing performer for word lovers in a festival dominated by dance and theatre.

Sara Bannister