Luke Wright: Essex Lion

Luke Wright's Cynical Ballads was one of 2011's undisputed Fringe standouts, and while he can't match that hour for conceptual perfection, Essex Lion consolidates his burgeoning reputation as a poet. Conveying the lifting of his heart is one of Wright's gifts, and his show was inspired by last August's revelation of a lion sighting in Clacton-on-Sea, confirming his title regardless of what the hour was going to be about.

“A fucking lion!”, expressed with both incredulity and joy, becomes the refrain for this warmly nostalgic portrait of life in the Home Counties and East Anglia. Introducing each verse with drolly funny anecdotes, Wright has a face so babyish he's still asked for ID buying alcohol. That's distressing for someone who wants to cut a rakish dash in Cuban heels à la Russell Brand or Carl Barat, perhaps not so much the thinly-disguised Pete Doherty figure he later sympathises with. These Boots Aren't Made For Walking revels in regret but he finds consolation in “talking” instead.

In the show's most affecting lines, he shares panglossian memories of roguish antique dealer Lovejoy filming in his village and his first kiss, tempered only slightly by his recent rewatching of the series. Class is a preoccupation as ever and Nigel Farage an absolute godsend, but he also proffers the cautionary tale of Posh Plumber and the familiar comic ruse of revisiting his painfully angsty, pretentiously funny adolescent yearnings. A lament for Houses That Used To Be Boozers, featuring Jenny Bede singing, is cutting but lovely.