Luke Wright: Chester Literature Festival

Review by Holly Rimmer-Tagoe | 26 Oct 2015

Luke Wright’s poetic monologue What I Learned from Johnny Bevan is a frenzied jumble of voices, characters and weird descriptions, endeavouring to jolt the audience out of their everyday doldrums.

Tackling class, politics and middle-class delusions, Wright effortlessly shifts from softly spoken impersonations of Millie and Tilly, music PR gurus selling a ridiculous idea for a hip, new music festival, to rambling, roving rants about New Labour’s cycle of spin.

Wright weaves the narrative together by returning to the friendship between the protagonist Nick, a music journalist enveloped in the waves of political apathy, and Johnny Bevan, a council estate outsider obsessed with politics. Amid a slew of kinetic adjectives, slapdash puns and sharp anecdotes, their relationship is cemented on a foundation of poetry and protest.

Nick and Johnny’s friendship parallels the rise and fall of the British Left; the final scene sees their relationship fracture as Johnny – previously an avid Labour party member who comes to despise the Blair government – declares that he is a UKIP supporter.

Wright’s performance is coarse and infectious; his inflections of anger and despair seem all the more pertinent given the rise of the Corbynista and the clamour for a political alternative. In a moment of armchair activism, with social media trends and online petitions, Johnny’s provocative question seems to hang in the air: “But did you really feel it?”


Luke Wright performed at Chester Literature Festival on 17 Oct 2015. Chester Literature Festival rran 10-25 Oct http://chesterperforms.com