LAZARUS Music Director Henry Hey On Creating New Sounds For Familiar David Bowie Songs

"They said, 'Can we meet and talk about something?'" music director Henry Hey says of how he got involved with the David Bowie-driven musical, Lazarus. "And I signed some paper that said I wouldn't talk about it."

One of the most highly-anticipated offerings of the season, the New York Theatre Workshop's production, directed by Ivo van Hove, has a book by Bowie and Enda Walsh inspired by Walter Tevis' novel, "The Man Who Fell To Earth."

Although the pop idol starred in director Nicolas Roeg's 1976 film version of the book, he did not compose any of its music. The score for Lazarus is a mix of new numbers and old favorites, giving Hey, who also penned the arrangements, the responsibility of adapting the sound of familiar songs to a new dramatic context.

Sarah Larson of The New Yorker describes the plot as "a kind of 'Space Oddity' in reverse. Its Major Tom is Thomas Newton (Michael C. Hall), an alien stranded on our planet, who drinks gin, eats Twinkies, and sings, pining for home, staggering around amid secondary characters and van Hovean splendor-video magic, blue wigs, black balloons, milk blood, a rocket ship drawn in masking tape."

Hey assembled a seven-piece onstage house band for the production.

"I didn't want a typical Broadway band. I wanted a rock band. There's a scene in a bar, and the band sounds like it's a drunken bar band. It needs to sound like that."

The two of them agreed on two guitarists. J. J. Appleton "plays the strummy parts" and pop-and-jazz veteran Fima Ephron plays bass. The desire for a "dirty, greasy" sound led them to hire sax player Lucas Dodd and trombonist Karl Lyden, instead of traditional trumpets and high horns.

"David had a vision about how the script would work with certain songs," Hey explains. "'This Is Not America' is quite a departure from the 'Falcon and the Snowman' version. David said, 'It should be something strange.' I adapted it to this misty sound."

'Life on Mars," a potential showstopper, was arranged with restraint.

"I did not want it to feel that all of a sudden we've turned a corner and it's become Broadway."

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New York Theatre Workshop presents Lazarus by David Bowie and Enda Walsh (Once, Tony Award). Lazarus is inspired by the novel The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis and directed by Ivo van Hove (Hedda Gabler, More Stately Mansions, Obie Awards). Lazarus began previews on November 18 and officially opened on December 7, 2015 at New York Theatre Workshop.

The cast of Lazarus includes Golden Globe winner and six-time Emmy nominee Michael C. Hall(Hedwig and the Angry Inch, "Dexter") as Thomas Newton, Tony Award nominee Cristin Milioti (Once) as Elly, and Michael Esper (The Last Ship) as Valentine, as well as Krystina Alabado (American Idiot), Sophia Anne Caruso (The Nether), Nicholas Christopher (Whorl Inside A Loop), Lynn Craig(Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson), Bobby Moreno (Year of the Rooster), Krista Pioppi (Spring Awakening Nat'l Tour),Charlie Pollock (The Wild Party), and Brynn Williams (Bye Bye Birdie).