Frankie Vah by Luke Wright

Performance poet Luke Wright set a high bar with his 2015 theatre debut. What I Learned from Johnny Bevan was a furious, charging, lyrical strike at Blairite centrism that hit the Fringe in the middle of Labour's leadership contest.

For his latest solo show, Wright has gone back in time, to the early '80s. As Tony Benn loses out to Denis Healey in an ideological fight for deputy leadership of Labour, university student Frankie Vah discovers the grassroots power of 'rant' poetry.

As Vah recounts his life to us, he re-enacts the backroom spoken-word gigs that energise him, take him to fame and ultimately fling him into despair as electability over principle becomes Labour's goal.

Wright is a mesmeric performer, his body humming with the rhythm of his words as Vah rejects the orthodoxy of his vicar father for a new faith in political revolution. He evokes a mood that feels familiar today from Jeremy Corbyn supporters.

Co-directors Joe Murphy and Alex Thorpe keep the atmosphere smoky and intimate, and keep Wright moving around Underbelly's Belly Button studio space. Nervous play with a microphone stand catches the gentle wryness of Wright's portrait of the younger Vah.

But if Wright captures the anger, passion and confusion of an era, it's tied to a story made up of over-familiar beats. The corrupting effect of Vah's success on his relationship with artist Eve is just too predictable, too schematic, for the electric poetry that seethes around it.