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Kate Tempest is blazingly good. Everyone’s been telling me this for ages, and she won the Ted Hughes Award in March, but to see her take the stage and do her thing is mind-blowing.

Using Greek myths as her starting point, Tempest elevates the everyday lives of a fictional group of South Londoners into the stuff of myth – never has it been clearer that we’re all the heroes of our own lives, and potentially the leading players in a tragedy. She does not shy away from the waste and hate and spite that poverty and neglect nurture, and yet the show is still uplifting, thanks to Tempest’s presence. She almost turns preacher at some points, urging us to take back some control from the false idols of capitalism and greed. Without ever stepping over the line into emotional manipulation or schmaltz, she has a gift for making you want to believe in the redemptive power of love. This is no naïve tale, though; love conquers some things but the ending is not happy for all of her characters.

Alternating between full-on, heavily backed rap and a lyric spoken word style that soars round Bristol Old Vic, Brand New Ancients is a show like no other. Tempest takes the lives and hopes and foibles of normal, amazing, downtrodden people and illuminates them. She turns the stuff of everyday mundanity into poetry and screams it from the rooftops. And then she kicks up a gear.

Backed by a stunning four-piece band (Kwake Bass on drums, Jo Gibson on tuba, Natasha Zielazinski on cello and Raven Bush on violin), the energy that emanates from Tempest is incredible. To carry off a one-woman show like this for over an hour, you need a passion for language, and Tempest has it in spades. By turns elegaic and celebratory, devastating and playful, Brand New Ancients will make you despair and then build you back up again, in one breath. Tempest’s grasp of language, her verbal dexterity, is mesmerising.

When she preaches, implores or demands, you can feel the audience respond. She calls bullshit on almost everything that we hold dear, and we cry “Amen”. She says jump, and we jump. I’d tell you to go and experience Brand New Ancients for yourself, but based on the queue out the door of Bristol Old Vic tonight I think it’s a safe bet that tomorrow’s show is sold out, too. This is the beginning of a new tour, though, so I do urge you to catch this if you can. Kate Tempest is what theatre – and poetry – need.

Brand New Ancients is part of Mayfest in Bristol. It’s on at Bristol Old Vic from 17-18 May, and then touring.