Review: LAZARUS at Capitol Musical Theatre, Wroclaw

Lazarus is Dawid Bowie's latest creation, the musical premiered on off-Broadway in 2015, and arrived five years later in Wroclaw.

Everything invites you to go with the flow. The music, lights, and atmosphere absorb you into the deep cosmos of Bowie's world. It’s like you’re soaring through the air and doing it without effort. When music plays, it seems like gravity doesn't exist. Great vocals combined with the ease and lights make the experience intense and smooth.

Faceless Thomas Newton (the brilliant Marcin Czarnik) makes this show fast, freaky, and severe. He’s carrying the show on his shoulders like a graceful circus strongman lifting a feather and I loved it! His desperate loneliness and deep human confusion (even though he is an alien) bring out the true nature of a need that makes life worth living. It’s mesmerizing and he’s perfect in this role. Overall, the play is fascinating and if you let it work, it will take you off-planet. The images are great, the music is even better, the lights and costumes (all by Mirek Kaczmarek) are designed to make you feel beyond reality, but I was missing the core.

The first act is like switching channels on the TV and mixing unrelated scenes. The characters are great in their own right but there is no real connection between them and they don't evolve. It's a bunch of beautifully designed scenes with no real story behind them. I loved the energy of Girl (Klaudia Waszak) because she is like the compact essence of art, Valetine (Cezary Studniak) was impeccable with her deep voice and groovy movements in a Woland style from Master and Margarita. Elly (Ewa Szlempo-Kruszynska) has a captivating voice and she's not afraid to use it.

The show that Jan Klata offers us is very symbolic (perhaps even too symbolic), I have the impression that the performers are drowning in the stage space, it is too big and too empty. There are great moments, the last duo Czarnik/Waszak is to die for, the body movements of Czarnik and Studniak are perfect, finally, they must have music in each of their muscles and vain because when they move you have the impression of watching a sensation of floating. I loved the dance with Albert Pysk's houseplant, and the cosmic trio of Teenage Girls (Alicja Kalinowska, Agnieszka Orynska-Lesicka, Justyna Wozniak), I loved the atmosphere, the balloons, the movements on stage, and the movements of the stage. Although I feel like there's a plot missing, when I put my logical thinking on airplane mode I had a good time in Bowie's world.

Photo: Tobiasz Papuczys