‘LAZARUS’ GETS TO RISE AGAIN
A new appreciation of fallen star Bowie
Look up here, man, I’m in danger I’ve got nothing left to lose I’m so high it makes my brain whirl Dropped my cellphone down below Ain’t that just like me?
Even if you are a huge David Bowie fan, you may not have heard of “Lazarus.” It’s not that Bowie’s 2015 musical, allegedly based on Walter Tevis’ “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” lacked star power. On the contrary, it starred Michael C. Hall (“Six Feet Under,” “Dexter”) and Sophia Anne Caruso (“Beetlejuice”) and it was directed by Ivo Van Hove (“West Side Story”). It’s just that very few people saw it in 2015, due to the shortness of the run, the secrecy of the process, and the size of the venue at the New York Theatre Workshop.
And even fewer people — least of all, me — understood what this vexing show was about on that cold December night in 2015. My review ran under the apt headline “Space Oddity.”
How could we have understood? Only one person knew what we were really seeing.
In actual fact, this show was both announcing and facilitating the death of David Bowie. And yet David Bowie, we all thought, was still alive.
We failed to see that the death of David Bowie wasn’t the same thing as the death of the man born David Robert Jones, which occurred about a month later, from liver cancer, two days after his 69th birthday. But the demise of Jones and his alter ego were, of course, related.
Why should all this matter in the middle of a pandemic that has made so many of us better aware of our fragility and mortality?
Remarkably, the subsequent (and similar) London staging of “Lazarus” is streaming this weekend, in honor of both Bowie’s birthday and the fifth anniversary of his death, and this weekend only. Of all the pandemic silver linings, in terms of access to previously hidden content, this one is among the brightest. It’s not to be missed by any Bowie fan.
And like all other American critics and lucky Bowie fans, I also saw “Lazarus” while Bowie was still alive.
After he died, as I lay in my bed that night, it was is if the blinds of ignorance about the piece had been pulled from my eyes. This weekend, though, you can watch “Lazarus” with five years of hindsight, and maybe also a deeper appreciation of loss. What a beyond-the-grave gift from one of culture’s most sophisticated thinkers about our lives, be they on Mars or Earth.
To understand what I am trying to say here, you have to buy into the idea that Bowie’s artistic life was a work of performance art and his artistic choices all subservient to this fictive, if flexible, entity.
No big deal there, you might say, perhaps referencing Madonna or Prince or Andy Warhol or some other sophisticated artist when it comes to thegi manipulation of identity (it’s worth noting here the prescience of what Bowie/Jones was exploring in years well before the great political rise of performative living).
That’s true, but Bowie was a true interdisciplinary creature, whose work encompassed music, theater, film, fashion, art, literature, photography, whatever creative outlet existed. More importantly, he decided to kill off David Bowie before Jones died himself.
Very few artists get to do this. Even fewer have the stunning amount of courage it takes. (Or so one imagines.)
For one thing, you have to know you’re going to die imminently. For another, you have to be able to deal with that truth on an artistic level, as distinct, say, from the usual deathbed refocusing on family and self, or even on the determination to go on living.
Moreover, you have to have been creating your alter ego from the beginning. Most young artists don’t do that because they are too busy dealing with all it takes to make a living and find an audience. Even Prince only became a symbol late in life, once these themes had consumed his creative interest in maturity. Yet Bowie was removed from Jones right from the start.
Conscious artifice from the beginning. And, along with a separate video made just before his death, “Lazarus” was his great coda. Given Bowie’s significance as an artist, it is woefully underexposed. You can’t play it on Apple Music or watch it on Netflix. But you can see it this weekend.
You might note I’ve said little about the content.
If you don’t know and you’re a fan of the man’s work, best just to watch. All you need to know is that Bowie was dying, wanted to remain living, and feared his final performance. As all of us do.
David Robert Jones had plenty left to teach.