Musical Monday: Lazarus

Photos of the CD Release

Lazarus - The infamous Bowie musical.

The show is inspired by the novel "The Man Who Fell to the Earth" by Walter Tevis. The book was adapted into the film "The Man Who Fell to Earth" directed by Nicolas Roeg. The story is of an alien who comes to Earth in hopes of finding a way to help his people survive numerous nuclear disasters. As with almost all alien films, the government gets involved and ruins everything. David Bowie played the lead in the film, and Roeg filled the film with surrealistic imagery which helped turn it into a cult classic. It was recently released on the Criterion label, and the soundtrack was released for the first time after 40 years.

With a book by Enda Walsh, music and lyrics by David Bowie - the show Lazarus opened Off-Broadway in 2015, and played the West End in 2016.  It was directed by Ivo van Hove, starred Michael C. Hall in the lead, along with Cristin Milioti, Michael Esper, Charlie Pollock, Sophia Anne Caruso and others. Bowie approached the producer Robert Fox in 2013 with this idea of revisiting the character of Thomas Newton in a new stage work. He offered his musical catalog and that was the start. Like Bowie's final album "Blackstar," much of the work on this was done in secret. It wasn't until 2014 or 2015 that word started getting out that Bowie was working on a musical. I am a huge fan and I always thought the musical was "Spongebob Squarepants" as Bowie voiced a character on that program. I was excited to hear about this show and read more about it when it opened on Dec. 7th, 2015. I was just as excited to hear that Bowie was coming out with a new album as well. The first song I heard was Blackstar (the title track), and then the second single Lazarus (which is also the opening number of the show). The album was released on Jan 8, 2015 (coinciding with Bowie's 69th birthday), on Jan 10th Bowie passed away from liver cancer, and on Jan 11th, the cast of Lazarus stepped into a recording studio to do a cast album.

Besides a small intro by Ricky Nelson (Hello Mary Lou), all the songs are Bowie's. And here is where it gets really interesting for me. There is no information anywhere (that I can find) that shows how the songs fit into the story that is being told on stage. I am not familiar enough with the story to figure it out, so I only have the cast recording to help me....and it isn't much good at that. It works as a cast recording in the sense that the cast has great voices and it is clear that they are telling a story through the music and performances. It just isn't clear by the songs, performances, or song-order what the details of the story are. Now, this as a rule is not a problem with most shows as they will have lives of their own, be performed by local theaters, tour, release scripts, etc. This production, on the other hand,.... somehow I really doubt if any production will tour, or if any local theater group would work on it. Who knows? And I guess we will all find out at some point.

Michael C. Hall sounds amazing on this recording. I know he is a singer/actor, and I know he played Hedwig for a while but I wasn't aware of how good his voice was until now. He has a good range, and clearly is understanding the character and how it fits with the songs he sings. Cristin Milioti is certainly not a new voice for any of us Theater fans. We all heard her sing "The Girl" in "Once", and was also in "How I Met Your Mother." Her two main songs are perfect matches for her. The new voice for me was Sophia Anne Caruso who was born in 2001. She has a great voice and really knows how to sell a song. In fact, her songs are some of my favorites....and I have a LOT of favorite Bowie tracks.

That is one really great thing about this cast recording. The songs are not from one period of Bowie's career. It spans from really early songs (The Man Who Sold the World, All the Young Dudes, Life on Mars?) to his mid-career Berlin songs (Sound and Vision, It's No Game, Heroes), to three brand new songs that were never heard until this cast recording came out (No Plan, Killing a Little Time, When I Met You.) [sidebar: if you want to hear Bowie sing these very songs, the Deluxe Edition of the cast recording has a bonus disc, or they were just released digitally on an EP called "No Plan"] What I find interesting is that Bowie had been writing music for the soundtrack to the film back when he was filming it in 1976. Roeg decided against using his music and so Bowie turned some of that into the album Low which he recorded with Brian Eno as the first of what is known as the Berlin Trilogy (Low, Heroes, Lodger). To hear some of these same songs resurrected and used in a new way - it works so well and is so Bowie. Always changing, being new, being creative, exploring, inspiring, challenging...he will be and is missed by many, yet he left such a legacy of music, lyrics, and images for us all to continually discover and re-discover.