You know those moments that happen on the bus, or in the street, where you eavesdrop on someone’s conversation and gain a brief window into their world? Do you ever think that you should maybe write down those moments, just to capture something that you might not experience again? This is exactly what Iain Heggie has done, creating a wonderfully eccentric patchwork of storytelling that preserves life’s chance encounters and recreates them before your eyes.
Whilst this is a live show it could easily belong to the radio; calm, collected and controlled, his soothing voice transports you to a station cafe, a canal pathway or a busy high street with effortless ease.
Iain doesn’t use Facebook in the same way as you or I probably do. There are no snaps of his lunchtime meals, no weekend updates of good times with friends and certainly no #selfies. Instead, Heggie has harnessed one of this decade’s most powerful social media tools for the use of observation, describing the world he sees around him, the people in it and occasionally how he interacts with the two.
These characters, their builds, personas, wants and flaws are described in loving detail; conversations are relayed as if verbatim, capturing each scene in still life. His stories have such a natural flow and steady pace that it is easy to sink into each as they come, although the necessary narrative interjections and the inevitable “He said”, “She said” can sometimes seem to repeat ad infinitum. Whilst this is a live show it could easily belong to the radio; calm, collected and controlled, his soothing voice transports you to a station cafe, a canal pathway or a busy high street with effortless ease.
When Heggie first enters the space he is tapping on his mobile phone, much as I was in the queue outside, before putting it aside for a pair of reading glasses; for me, this simple gesture sums up the sentiment of the show. Maybe, if we all looked up from our own screens, then we too would capture some of these quirky stories for ourselves.
