Image: Aisling Crabbe
Lazarus is a show that has confounded any and all expectations since its debut in New York Theatre Workshop in the winter of 2015. Its initial announcement was met with equal amounts of incredulity and excitement: David Bowie was writing a musical with Irish playwright Enda Walsh. The project garnered more attention as the details filtered out – renowned Belgian director Ivo Van Hove was on board to direct the piece, which would build upon Walter Tevis’ sci-fi novel The Man Who Fell To Earth. Bowie himself had been cast in the lead role in Nicholas Roeg’s 1976 film adaptation, effortlessly assuming the character of Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien who has left his dying home planet and arrives on Earth with the aim of finding help and eventually returning to his family. Throughout Bowie’s multifaceted acting career, his performance as Newton was frequently touted as one of his best: burnt out artistically and emaciated by a cocaine addiction, he cut a striking figure as an alien who lands on Earth, makes his fortune, falls in love, but in time relinquishes his hope of returning home. By the close of the film, Newton spends his days isolated – holed up in his apartment, succumbing to a gin addiction, being experimented on, perpetually watching a wall of televisions all simultaneously playing different channels. Roeg’s film is a lush and immersive visual experience, exploring its themes with a languid and abstract ease. This source material proved to be vital fodder nearly forty years later for the plot and characters of Lazarus, which revisits Newton where Roeg’s film left him.
Bowie had always identified with the character of Newton, whose otherworldliness and conflicted status – caught between two planets – aligned itself perfectly with his own mutability as a musician and performer. The multiple characters who seemed to emerge fully formed from his creative consciousness and assimilate into the world through his music chimed in harmony with Newton, an alien who falls twice: to Earth, and then from grace. Bowie had always been interested in writing musicals – his 1974 album Diamond Dogs was the result of what was originally planned as a musical adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. With this in mind, Lazarus arrived as his opportunity to explore ideas and themes that have fascinated him throughout his career, which he could develop and bring in new directions with co-writer Enda Walsh. Themes of confinement and containment characterise the majority of Walsh’s oeuvre, who has enjoyed international success with his innovative approach to theatre since the 1990s, with world renowned plays such as Disco Pigs (1996), The Walworth Farce (2006) and Penelope (2010). Walsh, whose plays Ballyturk and Arlington are two hotly anticipated upcoming productions in the Abbey Theatre’s new season, was recommended as a collaborator to Bowie by his long time producer Robert Fox. The resultant creative partnership saw the inception of a show that eschews any proper narrative structure for a surreal space where its themes and motifs can be explored over its 110 minute trajectory. Lazarus is not a musical or a play in any traditional sense: it features eighteen of Bowie’s songs embedded in a series of abstract scenes and sequences. An assortment of different characters, some real, some imagined, swirl around the tragic figure of Newton at the centre of the piece: ‘a dying man who can’t die’.
Critical reception of the show’s production in both New York and King’s Cross Theatre in London thus far has been mixed, with most reviewers attesting to the show’s abstract nature and fragmented narrative. The cast all deliver solid performances, with notable standouts including Michael C. Hall in the lead role (best known as the eponymous hero of Showtime’s television series Dexter), and teenage newcomer Sophia Anne Caruso in the role of Girl. Hall’s interpretation of the character takes it in an appropriate new direction: he lends an air of troubled maturity to his portrayal of Newton, and never tries to ape Bowie’s iconic 1976 performance. The cast deliver each song with vitality and despite the staggering number of world famous songs in the show, often manage to add layers of meaning and present them afresh, aided by some new arrangements and the fantastic live band who are integrated into Jan Versweyveld’s stunning set. The opening scene presents the character Elly, who has just been hired as Newton’s new assistant. She lacks a sense of purpose and identity, and her burgeoning attraction to Newton sees her assume the persona of his lost love, Mary-Lou, whose memory still tortures him. Also given stage time is a murderous outsider called Valentine, as well as a chorus of three teenage girls who supplement the songs as a chorus and occasionally interact with the characters. However, the most memorable and touching dynamic is between the nameless young Girl (Sophia Anne Caruso) who is conjured up by Newton’s imagination and helps him create a plan to escape his plight and achieve peace.
Ivo Van Hove, the famous Belgian director whose recent successes include two off-Broadway runs of Arthur Miller’s plays A View From the Bridge (2014) and The Crucible (2016), was no stranger to Bowie’s music before Lazarus. Van Hove has been a lifelong fan: he once soundtracked a Dutch language production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America using only Bowie’s songs, and as one of the most talented directors working in theatre today, was touted as an apt collaborative choice. His directing style prioritises the actor’s body as the site of action, and his interpretative mark is all over Lazarus: the characters dance, slide, and communicate volumes through their movements alone. Van Hove also incorporated a large televisual screen centre stage which is used throughout to arresting effect. The set and lighting design, both by Jan Versweyveld, are undoubtedly one of the show’s best features: a beige colour palette reigns supreme while the set itself evokes the inside of a skull, with two large windows that show the live band playing behind the main stage. Video and lighting projections are deployed at crucial moments and transform the set utterly when they suddenly suffuse the walls with colour and images during certain songs. Live video streams, a device frequently employed by Van Hove, play with the concepts of performance and liveness, whilst granting us new visual perspectives on the show’s action, culminating in the show’s beautifully poignant closing image of Newton finally at rest.
The show’s titular song ‘Lazarus’ also featured on Bowie’s last album Blackstar, released on his 69th birthday to universal acclaim, just 3 days before he died unexpectedly after a secret battle with cancer. There is the sense of a dialogue between Blackstar and Lazarus, the former containing cryptic lyrics alluding to death, dying, and transcendence. With all of these connections, Lazarus manifests itself as much more than a cultural icon’s foray into musical theatre, but rather as the culmination and convergence of several of Bowie’s interests, inspirations, emotions and experiences. Yet none of Lazarus is explicitly autobiographical – instead, little touches allude to the connections between Bowie and Newton, which is undeniably to the show’s credit. Although far from a perfect piece, Lazarus’ greatest strength could also be said to be one of its weaknesses: it flouts all the narrative rules associated with the tradition of the musical. Yet, this innovative approach allows the ideas in it to be fully examined and teased out: for all its themes of confinement, the show itself is utterly unfettered by any sense of an attempt to be what anyone else thinks it ought be. The show’s strength also lies in its status as a work of art that genuinely doesn’t try to please anyone, which serves as yet another perfect move in the inspirational legacy Bowie left. It is chaotic, fragmented, and at times a mess: sometimes bloated to bursting point with songs whose inclusion seems gratuitous; their relevance tenuous. Yet an irrepressible spark of joyous recognition surges through the audience at the opening chords of each number, no matter how arbitrary they sometimes seem. To the show’s credit, the songs that work well have a transformative and transportative effect, unfailingly convincing the audience to discover yet another layer to Bowie’s finely nuanced lyrics. Amid all its different devices Lazarus offers up numerous potential interpretations, many of them dependent on the degree of familiarity with Bowie’s music and artistic legacy. There is a huge amount going on, and it leaves itself little space to achieve overarching conclusions or resolutions. Yet, its aim was never to tell a traditional story, but rather to revel in the opportunity to create what Walsh often dubs ‘theatrical weather’ and atmosphere. Both Bowie and Walsh attested that their goal was only ever to ultimately put Newton at rest, and in the poignant final scene, he lies back in a rocket of his own creation, and surrenders to the spiritual peace now granted to him. For Bowie fans, it is hard not to align these final moments of peace with the end of Bowie’s own life: a tragically untimely but ultimately graceful departure after the release of his final brilliant album and the fulfilment of a lifelong aspiration to write and stage a musical. Even without considering the show’s ending in this light, it is hard to deny the core of genuine emotion throughout that is conveyed with such heartfelt authenticity by all its contributors. Lazarus is a beautiful and challenging piece that thoroughly deserves its place in Bowie’s formidable artistic legacy.
