This new play’s title is, then, as theatrical and tragic as it is imbued with the miraculous. The gospel’s “stage directions” of Lazarus appearance could not be more explicit:Īnd he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. “Groaning in himself”, praying with “lifted” eyes, Christ accomplishes his spectacular miracle. Lazarus is initially buried in a cave behind a stone, which is rolled away. If acting is at the heart of Bowie’s film, then the writing of Lazarus’s return from the dead in the Bible is also highly theatrical. The Raising of Lazarus, Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1310–11. But Newton’s mission fails and Christ’s was, famously, successful, albeit in the short term. In Bowie’s film, Newton similarly hopes to use Earth’s plentiful water to resurrect his own dying world. In St John’s Gospel, Christ seeks to resurrect his beloved friend Lazarus. The production was, appropriately, announced on Ap– Holy Thursday in the Christian calendar. The novel explicitly allies Newton with Christ and it’s very hard not to see some cruel parallels with the story of the Crucifixion in the last acts of the 1976 film. Why he, Bowie and Walsh chose to go with the title of Lazarus is, for now, a mystery.īut it’s certain that,like Spielberg’s E.T., the film’s science-fiction plot of a wise but innocent visitor from above has more than a little to do with the New Testament story. Rechristened Lazarus, it’s to be directed by the Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove, who has made some of the most searing and creative world theatre of recent years. Biblical connectionsĪnd now this story transitions to the stage. Newton’s survival on earth, Tevis’s novel and the film make clear, is dependent on his successful imitation of acting in films that have, via television, reached his drought-stricken, dying planet. New to acting in film, he plays someone acting in a new world. In its wake, Bowie went on to make some of his greatest albums, most notably 1977’s Low.īowie’s performance as Newton was a spectacular success. This was Bowie’s first feature-film role, and an appropriately fragmented, ambiguous and strange viewing and sonic experience. The film was a high point in the career of director Nicholas Roeg. The appeal to our own era is all too obvious. The film is saturated in a post-Richard Nixon, Watergate, Vietnam sense of paranoia, covert observation and a world gone politically and ecologically off-the-rails. But politics, love, organised religion (and alcohol) destroy his plans. He starts a high-tech company to earn the billions that can enable his home world’s salvation. Its hero, Thomas Jerome Newton, is a humanoid alien who comes to earth to obtain water for his dying planet. The Man Who Fell to Earth is in turn based on a 1963 novel by Walter Tevis. But if you look more carefully, such an involvement doesn’t seem strange at all – and we should expect great things. It was recently announced that he is involved as a writer (along with Irish playwright Enda Walsh) and composer in a new musical play, Lazarus, based on the film The Man Who Fell to Earth in which he starred in 1976.Ī musical play, which is not what you expect after one of his characteristic periods out of the limelight. But the real prize is “No Plan,” where Bowie croons an eerie torch song about drifting into space, floating over New York City – “There’s no music here/I’m lost in streams of sound.” It’s a crucial part of Bowie’s long goodbye to a world that wasn’t quite ready to let go of him.I’m not sure many saw David Bowie’s latest creative project coming. Bowie comes on violent and threatening in the industrial “Killing a Little Time,” snarling, “I’ve got a handful of songs to sing/To sting your soul, to fuck you over.” “When I Met You” is pop charm, with a Lindsey Buckingham quiver in the guitar twang. While he intended them for the musical, not his album, they’re a chilling last transmission. The real attraction is the three new Bowie tracks, recorded during the Blackstar sessions with the same great jazzy band and producer Tony Visconti. But the cast sometimes brings fresh nuance – especially “Absolute Beginners,” where Hall and Cristin Milioti revive a long-forgotten Eighties movie theme as a doo-wop wedding hymn. The songs have already been defined by the master – if you’ve heard Bowie sing “Life on Mars,” not to mention Barbara Streisand or Lorde, you probably won’t play this version twice. The other 18 tracks are theater pros doing his hits (“Changes,” “All The Young Dudes”) or deep cuts (“It’s No Game,” “Always Crashing in the Same Car”), recorded the day after his death. The Lazarus soundtrack has the title song, already familiar from his still-astounding Blackstar, along with three new Bowie songs.
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