“By the time I got to New York”
David Bowie took a bow on stage at the New York Theatre Workshop last night, following a triumphant first night’s performance of Lazarus.
Pictured here are (left to right) Sophia Anne Caruso, Michael C. Hall, Ivo van Hove, David Bowie and Cristin Milloti.
We’ll leave you with a few quotations pulled from various reviews published in the last 24 hours…
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
Newsday
Let’s start instead by calling Bowie’s first musical a riveting multimedia meditation — a visceral, disturbing, hallucinatory experience that’s as nonlinear and chameleonic as the rock star himself.
Some songs and avant-garde techniques may seem like throwbacks. But this is urgent, stirring, genuine rock art — musical theater like nothing that has fallen to Earth before.
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
Theater Mania
Lazarus doesn’t look or feel like any other musical currently playing New York. Even when it is not entirely lucid, it is still thrilling to behold.
At a time when the conventions of the American book musical are feeling decidedly stale, we can be thankful that there are shows like this to push the boundaries.
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
Shock Till You Drop
The New York Theater Workshop is a great space for a show like LAZARUS.
Directly across the street from famed LaMaMa, the performance-art home of the late Tom Murrin, Dancenoise’s Lucy Sexton and Anne Iobst, and Steve Buscemi, the music-video/performance art/video art choreography of Lazarus, with nods to so many of Bowie’s previous persona, all of which influenced many an East Villager, are perfectly at home in this space. And much like Newton, a creation of Bowie at his most drug-addled (he states he remembers nothing of the film’s production), the geishas and black balloons and milky secretions (a distinct reference to more oddities in the film) of Lazarus are manifestations of the loneliness, solitude, and distance that the icy tendrils of alienation forces onto an individual. Pained, unable to connect, and with a masking-tape spaceship as the getaway vehicle from one’s self, and highlighted by eighteen songs both classic and new, Lazarus is a choice extension in the grand ouevre for the perpetually enigmatic and highly individual artistry of David Bowie.
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
The Wrap
It’s the best jukebox musical ever. That may not sound like much of a compliment, but when you put David Bowie‘s musical catalogue at the service of book writers Bowie and Enda Walsh and director Ivo van Hove, the result is more than unique. It’s terrific must-see theater.
I haven’t experienced something this equal parts baffling and mesmerizing since David Lynch‘s “Muholland Drive.”
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
amNY
It’s baffling as hell and unapologetically avant-garde. But if you’re up for something like this, its arresting visuals, dreamlike atmosphere and introspective Bowie songs have the potential to keep you entranced for two straight hours without intermission.
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
#Lazarus #LazarusNYTW #TJNewton #TMWFTE