David Bowie’s ‘Lazarus’ Is Surrealistic Tour de Force
Is David Bowie‘s off-Broadway musical Lazarus the greatest anti-drinking PSA ever made? For decades, the musical’s central character, millionaire alien Thomas Newton, has imprisoned himself in his own apartment purgatory, drinking gin after gin after gin until he’s so numb that he’s begun seeing people who aren’t there and is immune to the advances of his attractive assistant. This is the same Tommy Newton who, as Bowie portrayed him in the 1976 Nicolas Roeg film The Man Who Fell to Earth, gleefully fired blanks at his lover during sex and allowed doctors to experiment on him so long as he could watch TV. Has drinking really ruined him, or is it something else? It’s hard to say.
Lazarus, a beautifully nuanced production that will be staged at the 200-seat New York Theatre Workshop through January 17th, continually emphasizes the surreal over the explicit at nearly every turn. People splash through milk. Others pop dozens of balloons. Strange women sniff others’ lingerie (frequently). Impromptu kabuki actors invade the stage. And through it all, Newton — played by golden-throated Michael C. Hall, who is best known for his roles on Dexter and Six Feet Under but whose theatrical credits include big roles in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Cabaret and Chicago — mostly remains stoic, lonely, yearning. At its core, Lazarus is a two-hour meditation on grief and lost hope (with no intermission), but it takes so many wild, fantastical, eye-popping turns that it never drags.
Bowie, who does not take the stage in Lazarus, wrote the musical with Enda Walsh (Once, book) as a sequel to the 1963 novel, by Walter Tevis, that inspired the film he starred in. The set list comprises some of the singer’s big hits (“Changes,” “All the Young Dudes,” “Heroes”), fan favorites (“Life on Mars,” an almost Prince-like reworking of “The Man Who Sold the World”) and deep cuts (“Always Crashing in the Same Car,” “This Is Not America”), as well as a handful of new songs, but its story is unique enough that it doesn’t feel like a jukebox musical. Where Movin’ Out owes its debt to Billy Joel and Holla If Ya Hear Me to 2Pac, Lazarus is unique in that it’s more an homage to Tevis than to Bowie; the story stands on its own, and that’s why it’s good.
The way that the cast and director Ivo van Hove (Scenes From a Marriage) have refused to discuss the plot with the press, suggesting it should be enjoyed on an “emotional level,” is a disservice to a fairly cogent storyline. After all, the film The Man Who Fell to Earth, with its time-traveling flashbacks, goop-sex montages and visions of a sandy planet beleaguered by drought, isn’t much more self-evident.