REVIEW: Jack Docherty: David Bowie and Me Parallel Lives – Eastwood Park Theatre, Giffnock
Strutting onstage in what looks a lot like David Bowie’s fantastic, red, white and black silk Kansai Yamamoto cape Jack Docherty arrives onstage in David Bowie and Me: Parallel Lives.
It turns out it’s a fabulous facsimile, creatively made by his mum from an old bedsheet. A booming soundtrack of his hero’s greatest hits pierces the air. Thus starts 75 minutes of memoir from the BAFTA award-winning performer.
Scottish memoir (real and imagined) is having a theatrical moment, with David Keenan’s This is Memorial Device just finishing a UK tour and Damian Barr’s Maggie and Me about to embark on its first. Bowie and Me makes a timely return having first been seen at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Docherty is a born story teller. Barely stopping to take a breath, he charges through his teenage obsession with the Thin White Duke. From his first glimpse on a Thursday night on Top of The Pops to ultimately interviewing Bowie on his chat show in the late 1990s.
From his teenage love obsession, footie cards, a lost penis, chat GPT, Dougray Scott, ‘his irrationally furious’ grandfather, the problematic ‘heroes’ portrayed in a 70s high school talent show, to a light touch on the more troubling aspects of his hero. This is a storytelling masterclass.
It explores how the lives of our heroes can improbably intersect with our own and implores us to find the happiness in the small things. Like This is Memorial Device it urges us to recapture that feeling of unalloyed joy in obsession with our teenage heroes.
A joyous celebration of teenage life and obsession we’ve all felt. Catch it as it continues to tour.
