Search

Saved articles

You have not yet added any article to your bookmarks!

Browse articles

GDPR Compliance

We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Service.

Out of My Head – Alan Watts is Alive and Well... Dead

 
Laura Tucker Review by Laura Tucker 4 Published: 10 Aug 2025 Pleasance Courtyard Show Dates: 30 Jul 2025-25 Aug 2025

Alan Watts is about to die. We meet him amidst a thunderstorm on his last day on Earth, 16 November 1973 – the whisky bottle within arm’s reach marking the occasion or simply passing another Tuesday.

Alan Watts’ legacy retold with a theatrical twist

In his one-man homage, Jeremy Stockwell channels the much-loved “spiritual rogue” – his monologues challenging conventional thinking while he unashamedly downs another drink and reminisces about his success. He dispenses life advice with the confidence of a man who’s been married three times, fathered several children, and still hasn’t kicked the habit. Stockwell’s familiar cut-glass accent and languid delivery cause you to lean in, even as he’s dismantling the idea of spiritual authority.

Mid-reverie, however, Alan is ambushed by a cramp. The fourth wall crumbles. “The show must go on,” Stockwell assures us. Is this a real slip, or a clever turn in the script? Impossible to tell at this point, leading to a little genuine jeopardy.

The performance then veers into semi-autobiography, with Stockwell emerging from behind the guru character to share his own history: acting gigs, medical troubles, and the creeping solitude that comes with age. Alan and Jeremy become two sides of the same coin – both chasing meaning while wrestling their own shadows.

It’s not all existential pondering. Stockwell delights in a bit of chaos, at one point opening the floor up for an audience Q&A with Alan. “What brings you joy?” one earnest punter asks. Stockwell’s reply is so perfectly pitched – equal parts Wattsian insight and cheek – that for a moment you wonder if the real Alan has popped in for a curtain call.

Pleasing a small crowd of ageing hippies and me, the show will have Watts fans nodding sagely at the philosophy and reflecting on their own guru relationships. There’s enough bite in the writing, and enough self-deprecation in Stockwell’s delivery, to keep the show from sliding into incense-scented sentimentality.

This isn’t a guru’s sermon, or even a biography. It’s one man’s theatrical reminder that the line between wisdom and bullshit is thinner than we’d like to admit – and that even the gurus are just muddling through, same as the rest of us.

Related to this article:

Location:

Performances

The Blurb:

Join Alan Watts, hippie, philosopher and pioneer of the counterculture, for his last night on Earth. In his Californian hilltop hideaway, Alan contemplates his mortality and his life as a freewheeling guru and spiritual rogue. From his hospital bed, Jeremy Stockwell imagines what might have been if he had met his hero. What results is a wild ride through an eccentric landscape of love, sex, vodka and mortality. Written and performed by Jeremy Stockwell, directed by Terry Johnson.