The best thing I can say about Jack Docherty’s new Fringe show (and by that I do mean the best, not the least worst) is that it feels like a proper Fringe show. As in something that is hard to imagine appearing anywhere else.
Oh, maybe Docherty could gussy it up, add half an hour’s running time and take it on tour down the line, but right now it fits perfectly into a Fringe hour. There is no sense that he’s either rushing anything to make it fit in or drawing anything out to fill the running time. It feels just right.
More importantly, it is one of those shows that you come across at the Fringe from time to time that feels like a real discovery.
Docherty, who made his name with the sketch show Absolutely and his Channel 5 chat show at the end of the 1990s, and is now best known in his native Scotland as Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson in the BBC comedy Scot Squad, has gone down the autobiographical route for this comedy drama which tracks the influence of his hero Bowie on his own life through the years.
On paper that might sound a little glib, but in the Gilded Balloon it’s anything but. What we have here, on one level, is a simple and rather sweet coming of age story which blends Docherty’s first love, cross-dressing, masturbation, schoolyard bullying and Ziggy Stardust.
That would be enough in itself, especially as Docherty throws himself into the telling of it with full gusto. But as it all comes together towards the end we begin to see that Docherty has more ambitions for it than that.
Using footage from the time he actually met David Bowie (on that Channel 5 chat show), Docherty expands the envelope to discuss the passing of time, how our heroes can sometimes be problematic and the way music and musicians whom we’ve never met (or, in his case, met only once) can play a crucial and sustaining role in our lives.
In short, this is a love letter to creativity, to music and to the teenagers we all once were.
And the soundtrack’s pretty good too.
Jack Docherty in David Bowie and Me: Parallel Lives, 20:30, Gilded Balloon Teviot (Dining Room), until August 27 (except August 14)
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/jack-docherty-in-david-bowie-and-me-parallel-lives
