In 1980, David Bowie told the writer and lyricist Tim Rice that a seminal influence in his teenage years came when he picked up a copy of Frank Edward’s “Strange People,” a compendium of human oddities, including the story of John Merrick, the legendary Elephant Man. “I have an eclectic thing about freaks, isolationists, and alienated people,” he told Rice by way of explaining why he’d chosen that moment in his varied career to star as Merrick in the original Broadway production of “The Elephant Man.” The classic Victorian melodrama of a hideously malformed young man yearning for — and finding — a home was of a piece, albeit a romantic one, for a music legend whose personae had always championed the dispossessed. That was as much true for those of this planet as it was for the interplanetary beings who also captivated him.The poignancy that attends the death of any artist was compounded by the valedictory that accompanied Bowie’s passing from liver cancer at the age 69. The diagnosis eighteen months ago spurred a creative flowering that included the recently-released album, “Blackstar,” featuring the song “Lazarus” from the eponymous off-Broadway musical that Bowie co-conceived with Enda Walsh, and for which he wrote several new songs as well as re-worked some of his classics, including “Changes.” The show, which opened at the New York Theatre Workshop on December 7, was a sequel of sorts to “The Man who Fell to Earth,” the 1976 Nicholas Roeg film which starred Bowie as Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien who arrives on a mission to save his planet and feels the gravitational pull of love, success, and wealth. “Lazarus,” which was directed by Ivo van Hove, picks up the tale years later as Newton remains on earth, disaffected, gin-soaked, lonely, and broken. The musical is opaque, surreal, dense, difficult, and visually stunning — and Bowie would not have had it in any other way.“Ice-cold bolts of ecstasy shoot like novas through the glamorous muddle and murk of ‘Lazarus,’ the great-sounding, great-looking, and mind-numbing new musical built around the songs of David Bowie,” wrote Ben Brantley in the New York Times. “These transfixing moments occur when Mr. Bowie feels most palpably present — that is when one of the show’s carefully stylized performers delivers a distinctly Bowie number in a distinctly Bowie style.”That theatrical style, which was to have such an out-sized influence on music, art, and fashion, was first cultivated in 1967 when Bowie, then 20 and known as Davie Jones, met Lindsay Kemp, the legendary British mime and the flamboyant performance artist. Much later Bowie recalled that the meeting with Kemp was a momentous event in his artistic evolution. “He lived on his emotions, he was a wonderful influence,” he said of his mentor. “His day-to-day life was the most theatrical thing I had ever seen … It was everything I thought Bohemia probably was. I joined the circus.”Bowie honed his theatrical skills under Kemp, whose adaptation of Jean Genet’s “Our Lady of Flowers” had a short-lived run on Broadway in 1974. Adding mime and commedia dell’arte to his arsenal of talent, Davie Jones morphed into David Bowie (the last name inspired by the American folk hero Jim Bowie) and a parade of personae followed — androgynous, alienated, mock aristocratic, and sleekly glamorous. Kemp’s influence is best seen in the stunning 1980 video for Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes,” in which the artist, as a clown, wanders through a Fellini-esque landscape in which mortality segues into eternity.As such, the video for “Lazarus” is a fitting and haunting sequel. The title is taken from the name of the biblical character who is raised from the dead by Jesus Christ and begins, “Look up here, I’m in heaven.” Within the shadow of Bowie’s death, the video is intensely eerie, ending with the artist, wraith-like, disappearing into an armoire. In retrospect, the off-Broadway musical is loaded with portent as well. It’s no accident that Bowie’s last collaboration should be with Walsh and Ivo van Hove, whose artistry — bold, audacious, and experimental — matches his own. It’s ironic that as unconcerned with commercial success as they are, tickets to “Lazarus,” now in its final performances through January 20, should be going for over $1,000 per ducat. It’s ironic as well that the show should be housed at New York Theatre Workshop, where “Rent” was launched in 1996 on the day that its 35-year-old composer Jonathan Larson suddenly died of an aortic dissection.Whether Bowie’s death will now bless “Lazarus” with “Rent”-like acclaim, prizes, and a fruitful commercial run is unknown, although doubtful. At any rate, the self-mocking sneer that was never far from Bowie in composition and in performance is there in “Lazarus.” Michael C. Hall, in the starring role, sings the song with a certain emotional distance, following it with an attempt at autoerotic asphyxiation — with a negligee no less.Walsh, in describing the character of Newton in the week prior to the show’s opening, might well have been speaking of Bowie: “For some audiences, it will break their hearts to see that man go where he has to go. In a way we just want him to find rest, we want him to find a proper death, a proper release, whatever that is.”
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