Those unacquainted with the lyrics to David Bowie’s Life on Mars might mistakenly assume this one-man show to be a travelogue. Instead, it follows Martin, a bullied, isolated teenager with mental health issues, who lives with his alcoholic mother in a Northamptonshire town. Only his twin obsessions with the Bowie-loving father who abandoned him, and the Thin White Duke himself, keep him going. On his 18th birthday, his mother gives him a letter from his dad – which leads Martin on an odyssey through London in the footsteps of both his father and Bowie. Is Martin on a treasure hunt or merely a wild goose chase? The ending is sufficiently oblique that I’m not entirely sure.
Written and directed by Adrian Berry, and performed by Alex Walton, this is an oddity, but is at times oddly compelling. The pleasures along the way include tantalising snippets (but not nearly enough) of Bowie’s music, and some sharply observed scenes, including one in an ailing Croydon karaoke bar, once the Greyhound pub where Bowie performed live in 1972.
There are undernourished and sometimes over-laboured themes here about creativity and the different forms it might take, including perhaps fandom. But this lament for the world’s misfits is given real clout by Walton, who plays a range of characters with impressive conviction but makes Martin so touchingly believable that you want to reach out a helping hand to stop him falling.
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At the Arts Centre, Swindon, 17 January. Box office: 01793 524481. At the Met, Bury, 19 January. Box office: 0161-761 2216. Then touring to 27 February.
