‘In the immediate aftermath of his death it was hard to concentrate in the performances’

When actor Michael C Hall signed up to play the lead in David Bowie’s musical Lazarus, he committed to a rock ’n’ roll journey of a lifetime.

With Bowie’s death earlier this year, the musical, for which he made his last public appearance on its New York opening night, is his final masterpiece.

Now in its London run, Hall (star of TV’s Dexter and Six Feet Under) plays the gin-slugging Thomas Jerome Newton, the character depicted by Bowie on screen in The Man Who Fell To Earth, who years later is a man from a distant planet unable to die.

The performances, inspired plot and magnificent reinterpretations of new songs and classics such as Heroes and Life of Mars, have given Hall cockpit position for Commander Bowie’s final trip.

“Every show feels like a new journey – a sense of bewilderment and discovery accompanies each show I do,” he says.

“Coming to London and having the show recontextualised in a new space, and by Bowie having died, has created a whole new sense of rediscovery.”

Hall, 45, performed the title song at The Brits earlier this year. It’s an inevitable highlight of the musical, although Hall’s rendition contrasts with Bowie’s recording.

“There are times it feels like he’s leaning into a wish that can’t be fulfilled, like he’s mocking his hopes,” says Hall.

“But he’s doing it in a way that has a lot more verve and hilarity than the version on Blackstar.”

Despite his illness, Bowie was a warm and generous collaborator, but rehearsals in the small New York apartment where Hall first showed the ailing legend his vocal skills were disconcerting.

He says: “I feel I had to turn out a part of my brain to get through it and keep my wits about me.

“I felt it was such a heady thing to do – something that was so far beyond anything I can ever have imagined I’d be called upon to do.

“It was also exhilarating. He and the musical director were the first people I’d sung it to.”

Hall feels a frail Bowie made one last effort to show the cast his support by arriving on stage at the end of their first night performance in New York.

In the weeks of mourning that followed his death, the musical took on a new significance.

“It was something people were clinging to in order to facilitate a sense of communion and grieving,” he says. “It became apparent that was what it had become.

“There was also the suspicion that, all along, Bowie himself expected that to be the case. He was always a step ahead of the audience, and I think Lazarus is no exception.

“In the immediate aftermath of his death it was difficult to keep concentration in the performances that we did because we were hearing so much of it anew, reframed by the fact of his passing.”

Lazarus is not a Bowie autobiography but a brilliant metaphor through which to view the many themes his music explored. Hall says: “I never tire of singing these songs. There’s always new nuances, new nooks and crannies within them, musically and lyrically.

“Lazarus shared a lot of the attributes Bowie adopted as an artist – being in but not of the world, his home being elsewhere, being as consumed by his interior imagined life as his real life, seeing fame and celebrity as some sort of necessary exile from the world.”

Bowie was no stranger to intoxicants and Jerome does spend the entire performance ripped on gin. Was Hall ever tempted to method act? “I’ve certainly done my share of research with that and other spirits but never in rehearsal or on stage,” he says.

“Apart from anything else, if I drunk a bottle of gin and started spinning the way I do, I’d end up throwing up and in one of those moments where I lie down to go to sleep and not wake up.

“But I have more than my fair share of memory on which to draw.”

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