Wondermentalist

You might expect anything that caused you to have just one hour’s sleep, the night before your dawn flight abroad, to be irritating, unpleasant and upsetting. But you’d be wrong. The reason for my late, short yet thoroughly enjoyable, sleep-deprived night was the Wondermentalist Cabaret, the hugely original and massively entertaining brainchild of our poet-in-residence Matt Harvey.

Based around poetry (Matt’s most obvious specialite de la maison), the evening - the first, but certainly not the last, if the audience have anything to do with it - of fun and frivolity was also deep and meaningful, when and where necessary. Clearly, in the age of “witty banter”, popularised by the likes of Top Gear, Dave TV and “Have I Got
News for You?”, there’s a hunger for intelligent humour, and Matt’s hand-picked squad of entertainers left us as well-fed, actually stuffed, as a proper Christmas dinner. I was definitely struggling to find room for another wafer-thin giggle, let alone another belly-laugh.

“What was so good about it?” you might ask. So if you are (and anyone not wanting to know the result, should look away now), I’ll tell you. Matt’s secret weapon of mass de-construction, when it comes to a good night out, is his combination of modesty, charm and generosity. He’s modest and generous to share the stage with others with no fear of being bettered (though that’s hard to imagine, with his unique contribution to perfomance poetry). And he’s charming enough to get several great performers and a couple of hundred guests in the same room for an event no one has heard of, just a few days before Christmas when everyone is supposed to be too busy.

The added combination of Matt’s hosting, linking and sharing, with “locally-sourced” poets and comedians (in fact, all were both) with a “Dead Poets’ Slam” - scooped incidentally by a mercifully fresh and feminine-looking Kabir - was, as it turned out, the way to win the hearts of the Totnes crowd who laughed with, and it has to be said, at each other. This crowd, many standing for over two hours, was definitely high on the holistic hormone that Matt calls “Totnesterone”, which filled the air and opened their chakras to much seasonal merriment.

Take a look at the line-up (www.wondermentalist.com) to get an idea of Matt’s unassuming grasp of what it takes to re-invent the “variety” genre. And take on board the fact that it was almost a complete sell-out within minutes of the doors opening as most tickets were nabbed in advance. This, all thanks to Matt’s local popularity as well as his vision, skill and dedication to performance poetry and giving people something really good to marvel and laugh at. The Wondermentalist Cabaret is a clearly and quickly a winning formula for all poetry punters, gag-guzzlers and avid appreciators of novel and unpredictable live entertainment.

Well done Matt - in every way the original Wondermentalist.

The next Wondermentalist Cabaret will take place on Friday 25th January, again at it’s ‘home’ venue - The Seven Stars in Totnes. Get your ticket quick!

The podcast will follow - stay tuned at www.wndfl.com

This entry was posted on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 1:29 pm and is filed under cabaret. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.