![]() Elsewhere, a killer on the loose called Valentine (Michael Esper) draws ever closer to Newton. Neither Walsh's script nor Bowie's music makes clear whether this is all a booze-fuelled hallucination, a result of Newton's alien biology, a near-death experience or something else entirely. It is this absence of clarity which is the most frustrating element of Lazarus. Prepare to be baffled, and not in a good way. "I see baffled people." Sophia Anne Caruso (Girl) with Michael C Hall (Newton). Image: Jan VersweyveldĪs the Gilbert to Bowie's Sullivan, Walsh's book is desperately dire, especially when compared to the acclaimed dynamism of Once. The story quickly disappears down a dark hole with too many scenes displaying too little in the way of sense or explanation: balloons are popped, a kabuki dancer appears, there are dives through spilled milk, and people we've barely been introduced to are suddenly stabbed to death. Strangely for a leading man, Hall is asked to spend around half the musical on stage but on the sidelines, a move which robs Lazarus of much of its emotional power. The dialogue and plot feel woefully underwritten and, like the static that intermittently plays on a large screen, there is more noise than signal in Walsh's book. The Bowie-penned numbers go a little way to lifting Lazarus up to something approaching entertainment. Featuring 17 live tracks in total, stone cold classics like The Man Who Sold The World, Life On Mars and Absolute Beginners are movingly sung alongside lesser-known tracks and three written especially for this musical. Curiously absent, though, are songs which would have made perfect sense here like Rock 'n' Roll Suicide, Starman and Heaven's In Here. The music will be the touchstone of this show and, on that front, fails quite spectacularly. In 2013, his close friend and producer Tony Visconti said that "Bowie has found out what he wants to do: he wants to make records. Nothing else." It is a shame then that Ziggy changed his mind, as his contribution to Lazarus is underwhelming. Few of the songs make a blind bit of difference to complementing, understanding or pushing forward what passes for a narrative. ![]() The new arrangements don't do much to help the actors - Lennox in particular is asked to reach some punishing keys - and the musical's parting shot, a bland version of Heroes, sends us too gently into that good night. Hall also struggles with making his mark here. ![]() An accomplished musical theatre actor who has appeared in productions of Cabaret and Chicago, he has the Thin White Duke's vibrato down pat and generally follows the original vocal stylings a tad too slavishly. He has admitted that, when singing Bowie's works, " I want to capture something of his essence but manage to bring my own as well." Er, one out of two isn't bad? "There's a starman waiting in the sky." Sophia Anne Caruso (Girl), Michael C Hall (Newton).
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