Space oddity

One of David Bowie’s last works, Lazarus, is a musical based on Walter Tevis’s novel The Man Who Fell to Earth. Enda Walsh has written the script. The lead character, Newton, is a derelict celebrity addicted to gin who occupies a big brown apartment full of bickering attendants. It’s unclear who or what Newton is. Human or alien? Something in between? His ontological status is a further puzzle. He may be alive, dead, half-dead, non-dead, half-undead or semi-not-quite-half-unalive. This is a problem, dramatically. A character who exists outside the mortal realm can’t make choices or perform actions that affect himself and others. He’s not a personality, therefore, just a puzzle wearing some clothes. Beige clothes in this case.

Newton’s light-brown shirt and fawn trousers match his fudge-y make-up. The playing area, also beige, is arranged in rectilinear blocks like a bookless municipal library. A glass wall at the rear of the stage reveals a lugubrious band of musicians who churn out Bowie’s magnificent back catalogue without a trace of passion or involvement.