Lazarus is an utterly bizarre, utterly absorbing, utterly confounding theatrical experience. It celebrates the music, genius and individuality of David Bowie in an particularly Ivo van Hove kind of way. If you expect to be lost in a mediation on life, death and spilt milk, you will be completely rewarded. Frustrating and remarkable, Lazarus is a unique theatrical experience.
We talked around the characters and the themes of the book. On isolation and madness and drug abuse and alcoholism and the torments of immortality. And there was a lot of talk about the beauty of unconditional love and goodness. We talked about characters finding themselves out of control - about the story sliding into a murky sadness and quick violence - about characters having drab conversations about television snacks - the everyday bending quickly and becoming Greek tragedy. The celestial and the shitty pavement.
This is Enda Walsh discussing the genesis of Lazarus, the theatrical musical experience he co-created with David Bowie which is now having its premiere season at the King’s Cross Theatre. With music and lyrics from Bowie, a central character from The Man Who Fell To Earth, an idea that follows inevitably from that work (book or film), some text from Walsh, and the singular input of hot-shot director, Ivo van Hove, Lazarus is not a musical or a play or even a play with music. It is a musical meditation, complete with fascinating visual treats, bells and whistles, and it comes truly alive during the sequences involving Bowie’s music.
The key to enjoying Lazarus is to not try and work out what is happening as the performance is occurring. It’s not exactly that there is no point to that; it is more that, once the performance is over, everything makes immediate, if superficial, sense. As time passes thereafter, and the considerable visual distractions recede into memory, motivations and themes become more apparent. This is not a text with a single meaning, and each person will relate to it differently - that is one of its strengths.
Lazarus seems, almost unarguably, to be Bowie’s parting gift to the world. Everything about the production reeks of Bowie’s essence, his duality, unpredictability and non-conformist attitude to life, love and what matters.
Music is at the centre of everything and musicality, of the hedonistic and metaphysical kind, pervades every corner of the production, every nuance in the performances, every flash-bang-wallop of the video images (Tal Yarden providing exquisite work) which encase the performers in a dazzling, dizzying and disorienting blanket of wonder.
The set, from Jan Verweyveld, reeks of the 1970s and is plain so that the lighting effects (also Verweyveld) and video designs can most easily work their magic. The colour and movement here comes from the music and video interaction - and Ivo van Hove keeps everything moving and in play throughout.
Enigmatic meets inscrutable in a game of musical Cluedo might best sum up the directorial vision here. It’s nuts - entirely nuts - but it entirely suits the narrative’s loose grip on story and character. About half-way through you feel like you could fly to the moon too, rocket or not.
It is hypnotic and hallucinogenic in tone throughout - simultaneously moreish and unfathomable.
You just have to let go of the little things - why is the refrigerator door left open so often? - and concentrate on the bigger, looser themes: the relationship between love and release; the difference between freedom and death, if any; the pointlessness of crying over spilt milk.
Michael C Hall is in incendiary form as Thomas Jerome Newton, the character from The Man Who Fell From Earth. Wan, enigmatic, desperate and lost, the character Hall plays is always fascinating, like a bright, burning star in the heavens. It is a far cry from Hall’s Hedwig on Broadway and a nod to the extraordinary talents of the actor.
That holds true of most of the cast actually - the singing is blindingly good.
Michael Esper is haunting and ethereal as Valentine, and his capricious, violent murders (or are they?) shock as easily as his stage presence impresses.
Amy Lennox is in terrific form as Elly, although quite what her character does and represents is never blazing with clarity (no fault of hers).
Sophia Anne Caruso plays the ethereal alien child creature, Girl, and she is astonishingly good, especially in the vocal department. A shatteringly pure sound comes from Caruso and hearing her sing is really worth the ticket price on its own.
Jamie Muscato, who plays the slick, flash, suited and booted Ben does a fine line in would-be lothario, although few banker types would boast a voice as impressive as Muscato’s is here.
Still, van Hove’s whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Stardust is everywhere in Lazarus, and the Newton character’s search for release by escape rocket is as mystical as it is confusing: but it is always unique and arrestingly alien.
You won’t see anything as musically or textually demanding on most London stages and few things so vibrantly sung and visually discombobulating.
Why would you miss it?
See Lazarus for yourself and tell us what you think