Matt Harvey: Wondermentalist

Entertaining and refreshing, Matt Harvey has something that more performers should bring to the stage: pure, unaffected humility, undiminished by a conspicuous talent.

Harvey delivers his poems, each written with the attention and skill of a first-class craftsman, with a charming blend of self-deprecating irony and seriousness. His quiet, unassuming voice holds his audience captivated throughout.

This is poetry with a unique style. As Harvey plays with words, rhymes and rhythms with witty humour, while keeping the themes entertainingly mundane – from potatoes and kippers to curtains, and his tiny and fiercely green Devon hometown of Totnes. Almost all of his poems are performed from memory, some with startling velocity, without sacrificing the clarity of his delivery.

Like his superhero alter-ego, Empathman, Harvey is the kind of person we would like to get to know better, and the length of the queue to meet him at reception after the show and buy a signed copy of his book after the show is testament to that.