This show is a refreshing and much-needed play looking at a troubled young man (yes, don’t fall off your chair – a man) growing up and trying to find his place.
The context is that he has been abandoned by his father when just two, brought up by a mother who has her own demons to contend with and has turned to drink and neglects, although loves, the son she doesn’t understand.
The son, Martin, is already in therapy for eating disorders and self-harming. The one-man show handles the dramatic scenarios by having a recorded voice for the meetings with the therapist who, frankly, states the blindingly obvious.
The limited mother–son exchanges are performed by the actor voicing both characters and this is also used for the conversations between Martin and the record-shop owner who helps him.
Bowie comes into the story in two ways. The first is that Martin discovers that his father, who he idealises, was a massive Bowie fan back in the day. Martin becomes obsessed with Bowie. The plot follows Martin’s journey when given a letter by his mother on his 18th birthday. The letter is from his father and invited his son to take a trip around Bowie’s London.
The show, of course, pivots on the performance from Alex Walton, our lone performer. This is excellent, whether the damaged, cowering lad or the manic dancing free spirit, freed from his internal mental constraints. He uses a simple stage design with a few pieces of tubular furniture that can be used as a bed, a shop desk, a karaoke stage and other scenarios on this journey.
There is a fair amount of Bowie music, lots of images of performance and also the young David Robert Jones but if anyone thinks is a Bowie night they will be somewhat disappointed. In some ways Bowie could be replaced by other iconic, outsiders from the music world or maybe also fi or theatre.
However, as someone with a little bit of a Martin in me – well, Martin’s dad to be more accurate – the story struck home on many levels and was very moving, even when the script slipped into some clumsy clichés, prosaic language, and a not very successful Bowie “intervention”.
The show is not much more than an hour-long yet had enough twists and turns to keep me guessing and I am notoriously and annoyingly good at predicting where a story is going.
However, the ultimate message is rather dangerous in that it seems to say if you cannot excel in the world you chose (in Martin’s father’s case music) there isn’t any point going on. I rather hope Martin doesn’t accept his father’s depression and when he says he is ready to go home he had realised his dad was wrong.