There is an air of Nick Park’s Creature Comforts about Gary McNair’s “love letter” to Billy Connolly. The performer builds his joyful one-man show from interviews with ordinary people about what they think of the shipyard welder turned national treasure. He recalls as many as 50 of them, each delivered with careful attention to the pauses, mistakes and digressions of everyday speech.
He shows us people losing the thread, mixing up their words or going on surreal flights of fancy. Ask a stranger about Connolly and you will, it seems, be told about sheep thrown into the sea, the pleasure of Flumps and something about the Wombles. Like Park’s animation, which put human voices into the mouths of clay animals, Dear Billy delights in the quirks of conversation.
There is tremendous fun in that, but McNair goes so much further. Joined on the carpeted stage by musicians Jill O’Sullivan and Simon Liddell, creating a superb acoustic soundtrack, he weaves his source material into a democratic tapestry with Connolly as its guiding spirit. McNair used a similar technique in Locker Room Talk, his 2017 response to Donald Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” remarks, in which he quizzed men about their attitudes to women. Dear Billy has none of that darkness, but in its collage of voices, it presents an equally rich picture of a nation.
In an expertly modulated performance directed by Joe Douglas for the National Theatre of Scotland, he groups his material thematically, taking us chronologically through Connolly’s life as narrated by those who once met him, half-knew him, heard something about him or misremember a routine. Their stories – reliable or otherwise – present Connolly as a messiah and an ordinary Joe, a lifesaver and a charlatan.
The affection for Connolly is unmistakable, but Dear Billy is as much a love letter to the people. In this telling, Connolly is more symbol than human being; less a man than a mirror and an inspiration. Naturally, McNair weaves in his own tale of meeting the Big Yin, adding to the impression of a secular god who is at once charismatic and one of us. The cumulative effect is vivid, funny and poignant.
• At the Traverse, Edinburgh, until 20 May. Touring until 24 June.
