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"Old Words into Something New": David Bowie and Enda Walsh's Lazarus
Comparative Drama ( IF 0.1 ) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 , DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2023.a913244
Michael Jaros

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • "Old Words into Something New":David Bowie and Enda Walsh's Lazarus
  • Michael Jaros (bio)

Introduction: Avant-garde jukebox musical?

When it was announced that David Bowie was to be involved in the creation of a new musical called Lazarus, which would premiere at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2015, it became the most sold-out ticket in that company's history.1 Its popularity was buoyed by the fact that Ivo van Hove, one of the most successful directors in the contemporary theatre, would direct, and Enda Walsh, the well-known Irish playwright who had recently achieved success adapting the film Once for the stage, would co-author the script. Billed as a sequel to Walter Tevis' 1963 novel The Man Who Fell to Earth, Lazarus continues the saga of the alien Thomas Newton, who is stranded on earth living on a diet of cereal and gin and watching a continuous stream of television.

When Lazarus opened, reaction to the production was tepid. Critics appeared thoroughly confused by the piece, which was decidedly distant from any sort of jukebox musical where, as Millie Taylor notes, "the familiarity of the music is used to draw the audience into an interaction with the performance."2 For Hilton Als, who titled his New Yorker review "static," Lazarus amounted to only so much cold noise. After praising Bowie's genius, recounting his own personal memories of the singer's music, and recalling Bowie's masterfully surreal performance in the 1976 film adaptation of Tevis' novel, Als maintained that he found the play to be confusingly fragmented and cold.3 Bowie's memorable music was certainly present, along with some new songs: people at the New York Theatre Workshop watching the premiere would themselves hear the title [End Page 194] song "Lazarus" several weeks before Bowie himself released the single. A cadre of characters sung his songs, but the narrative surrounding them was fragmentary and hallucinatory. Various characters, who may or may not be figments of his imagination, arrive and depart, and ultimately Newton himself "finds rest" in an escape to the stars.

Despite such critical reservations, Lazarus eventually transferred to London. In the interim, however, Bowie died, succumbing to cancer. I will argue that, alongside his last studio album Blackstar, which was timed for release with Bowie's birthday and subsequent death, the musical Lazarus was itself also a deep reflection on mortality and Bowie's own performative legacy. In co-writer Enda Walsh's dramaturgy, Bowie recognized the return of such themes again and again, and he chose Walsh specifically to help craft such a story for the musical. Given its subject matter, Lazarus was certainly an outlier as a jukebox musical; the work defied the audience and critics' expectations alike. Lazarus did include many of the jukebox musical's features: it was comprised of work from Bowie's pre-existing song catalog (along with a few new offerings) and those songs were sung by fictional characters in a plot constructed around the songs.4 Yet the work was decidedly more avant-garde than the nostalgic fare offered by most jukebox musicals. Als' review, replete with its nostalgic recollections of Bowie, reveals just such a befuddled horizon of expectations. Instead, Lazarus exhibits what Theodor Adorno and Edward Said both describe as "late style," a sort of terminal creative period in the life of an artist in which, as Adorno writes, "the power of subjectivity . . . is the irascible gesture with which [the "subject" of the artist] takes leave of the works themselves . . . of the works themselves it leaves only fragments behind."5 Bowie was far from embarking on a nostalgic retrospective of his work in the musical; the singer was, as Philip Auslander dubbed him, "authentically inauthentic," constantly speaking through the masks of various personae his entire career.6 It is fitting that for him the fragmentation so characteristic of late style would involve a fictitious character, Thomas Newton, whom he had played on screen. Indeed, immediately post-production, Bowie claimed that he thought he was Newton, the marooned alien, and went on to assume Newton's look for one of his most well-known personae of the 1970s, "the thin white...



中文翻译:

“旧词化新”:大卫·鲍伊和恩达·沃尔什的《拉撒路》

以下是内容的简短摘录,以代替摘要:

  • “旧词化新”:大卫·鲍伊和恩达·沃尔什的《拉撒路》
  • 迈克尔·贾罗斯(简介)

简介: 前卫点唱机音乐剧?

当大卫·鲍伊 (David Bowie) 宣布将参与创作一部名为《拉撒路》 (Lazarus) 的新音乐剧并于 2015 年在纽约戏剧工作室首演时,该音乐剧成为该公司历史上最售罄的门票。1它的受欢迎程度得益于当代戏剧界最成功的导演之一伊沃·范霍夫 (Ivo van Hove) 的执导,以及爱尔兰著名剧作家恩达·沃尔什 (Enda Walsh) 的执导,恩达·沃尔什 (Enda Walsh) 最近成功地将电影《曾经》搬上舞台,将共同创作剧本。《拉撒路》被宣传为沃尔特·特维斯 1963 年小说《坠落地球的人》的续集,继续讲述外星人托马斯·牛顿的传奇故事,托马斯·牛顿被困在地球上,靠麦片和杜松子酒为食,连续看电视。

拉撒路开业时,人们对这部作品的反应不温不火。评论家们似乎对这部作品感到彻底困惑,它与任何类型的自动点唱机音乐剧截然不同,正如米莉·泰勒所说,“音乐的熟悉度被用来吸引观众与表演互动。” 2对于希尔顿·阿尔斯 (Hilton Als) 来说,他将《纽约客》的评论称为“静态”,拉扎勒斯只不过是冷漠的噪音而已。在赞扬了鲍伊的天才,讲述了他自己对这位歌手音乐的个人记忆,并回顾了鲍伊在 1976 年改编自特维斯小说的电影中精湛的超现实表演后,阿尔斯坚持认为,他发现这部剧支离破碎、冰冷,令人困惑。3鲍伊令人难忘的音乐当然也出现了,还有一些新歌:在纽约剧院工作坊观看首映的人们会在鲍伊本人发行单曲的几周前听到主打歌[完第194 页] “Lazarus”。一群人物唱着他的歌曲,但围绕他们的叙述却支离破碎且充满幻觉。各种各样的人物,可能是也可能不是他想象中的虚构人物,到达并离开,最终牛顿本人在逃往星星的过程中“找到了休息”。

尽管有如此重要的保留,拉扎勒斯最终还是转移到了伦敦。然而,在此期间,鲍伊因癌症去世。我认为,除了他的最后一张录音室专辑《Blackstar》(该专辑在鲍伊生日和随后去世之际发行)之外,音乐剧《拉撒路》本身也是对死亡和鲍伊自己的表演遗产的深刻反思。在合著者恩达·沃尔什的剧本创作中,鲍伊一次又一次地认识到此类主题的回归,他特意选择了沃尔什来帮助为音乐剧创作这样的故事。鉴于其主题,《拉撒路》作为点唱机音乐剧无疑是一个异类。这部作品辜负了观众和评论家的期望。《拉撒路》确实包含了点唱机音乐剧的许多功能:它由鲍伊先前存在的歌曲目录中的作品(以及一些新歌曲)组成,并且这些歌曲是由虚构人物在围绕歌曲构建的情节中演唱的。4然而,这部作品显然比大多数点唱机音乐剧所提供的怀旧票价更加前卫。艾尔斯的评论充满了对鲍伊的怀旧回忆,揭示了这样一种令人困惑的期望视野。相反,拉扎勒斯展示了西奥多·阿多诺和爱德华·赛义德所描述的“晚期风格”,这是艺术家生命中的一种最后的创作时期,正如阿多诺所写,“主观性的力量……是一种暴躁的姿态, [艺术家的“主体”]离开了作品本身……作品本身只留下了碎片。” 5鲍伊远没有开始对他在音乐剧中的作品进行怀旧回顾;正如菲利普·奥斯兰德(Philip Auslander)所说,这位歌手“完全不真实”,在整个职业生涯中,他不断地戴着各种面具说话。6对他来说,晚期风格特有的碎片化涉及他在银幕上扮演的虚构人物托马斯·牛顿,这是很合适的。事实上,在制作完成后,鲍伊声称他认为自己牛顿,一个被困的外星人,并继续模仿牛顿的外表,以塑造他在 1970 年代最著名的角色之一,“瘦瘦的白人......

更新日期:2023-11-27
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