Strutting onstage in what seems rather a lot like David Bowie’s implausible, crimson, white and black silk Kansai Yamamoto cape Jack Docherty arrives onstage in David Bowie and Me: Parallel Lives.
It seems it’s a superb facsimile, creatively made by his mum from an outdated bedsheet. A booming soundtrack of his hero’s best hits pierces the air. Thus begins 75 minutes of memoir from the BAFTA award-winning performer.
Scottish memoir (actual and imagined) is having a theatrical second, with David Keenan’s This is Memorial Device simply ending a UK tour and Damian Barr’s Maggie and Me about to embark on its first. Bowie and Me makes a well timed return having first been seen ultimately 12 months’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Docherty is a born story teller. Barely stopping to take a breath, he prices by his teenage obsession with the Thin White Duke. From his first glimpse on a Thursday evening on Top of The Pops to finally interviewing Bowie on his chat present within the late Nineteen Nineties.
From his teenage love obsession, footie playing cards, a misplaced penis, chat GPT, Dougray Scott, ‘his irrationally furious’ grandfather, the problematic ‘heroes’ portrayed in a 70s highschool expertise present, to a lightweight contact on the extra troubling points of his hero. This is a storytelling masterclass.
It explores how the lives of our heroes can improbably intersect with our personal and implores us to search out the happiness within the small issues. Like This is Memorial Device it urges us to recapture that feeling of unalloyed pleasure in obsession with our teenage heroes.
A joyous celebration of teenage life and obsession we’ve all felt. Catch it because it continues to tour.
