Review: LATER LIFE LETTER, Southbank Centre
Photo credit: Emily Fae
Later Life Letter at the Southbank Centre is a celebration of the new book of poems by Luke Wright, a writer firmly establishing himself with a powerful voice. With confidence and bravado that is self-aware rather than driven by ego or elitism, Wright takes words written on the page and gives them equal force as they resonate across the auditorium.
The premise for this body of new poems emerges from Wright’s experience of being adopted as a baby. Now an adult, reflection on an experience that began before he was able to comprehend its scale has provoked a deeply introspective assessment. Central to the work is the idea, as the title suggests, of a later life letter, a document written by a social worker for an adopted child, intended to be read when the time is right, offering context without intrusion. From this starting point, Wright traces stories of his parents, birth mother, siblings, and their grief, sacrifice and rewards. It is an insight into the individual characters that make up an adoption narrative.
This is not a performance driven by excess or urgency, but one that offers a personal hour without collapsing inward, opening outward toward shared human questions.
The work asks difficult, quietly persistent questions. What is the “primal wound”, really? How can one be grateful and yet still pine for an invisible, intangible need to understand oneself more fully? These questions are held with care, and the work resists the trap of autobiography as revelation, becoming instead a literary meditation on belonging, on the need to know where you come from, and why that knowledge matters. It is not about completeness, but about finding enough understanding to move forward.
Wright’s language is central to the success of the piece: colloquial and precise, resonant and affecting. This is poetry that speaks in a register that audiences recognise, and it is not overly sentimental. We are allowed to laugh — a lot. It is contemporary, culturally grounded and unforced. Accessibility here is not a dilution of form, but an extension of it.
The structure moves fluidly between anecdote and poem, allowing each to sharpen the other and over the course of the hour, Wright allows the audience to know him without offering the illusion of full disclosure.
The concept of the later life letter is a beautifully restrained idea. As a metaphor, it reaches far beyond adoption. The show suggests that many of us live with partial stories, learning who we are slowly, as and when we are ready to hear them.
***** Five stars
Reviewed by: Stephanie Osztreicher