Joshua Seigal has been writing poetry for children and doing workshops and performances in primary schools for six months, and he radiates fun in his debut show.
Bouncing onto the stage, he explains to his largely very young audience that he is going to take them on a journey to explore the power of poetry. "It's an empty shop unit, but now it's a theatre", he says. "What this shows is that some things can be turned into other things."
It helps, of course, if you have a wildly inventive imagination, and fortunately Joshua - or "Joshie Poshie" as he confides his mum used to call him - has this very ingredient, along with an easy rapport with "the boys and girls, and the big boys and girls" in the audience.
The 25-year-old Oxford University and UCL philosophy graduate from Whetstone makes poetry enjoyable and accessible as he cavorts around with cartoonish glee, gyrating his body, gesticulating, and drawing on his props, which include a trainer with a plastic poo, a used-up toilet roll-cum-microphone, a packet of T-bone steak crisps, and a picture of one of his characters, Ushus Magushus.
His poems, which range from one on being "a warrior king" of the garden - "I don't take orders from anyone... until mum calls me in for dinner" - to others on a school bully, his dad and animals, are full of educational value and engaging silliness, plus great pay-off lines, which ensured that seven-year-old Emma in the second row and the little people nearby were not the only one in cascades of giggles. The grown-ups loved him too.
(A word of warning: it's a bit of a magical mystery tour to find the venue once you're inside Princes Mall, so arrive early).
