See it if you love David Bowie music, can appreciate his weird/wonderful aesthetic and want insight into his final days on earth,
Don't see it if you are looking for a straight forward story or everything to make perfect sense, or if you aren't a fan of Bowie's music. Read more
See it if you love david bowie's music and are a fan of the man who fell to earth. It is a follow up to the movie and it helps if you remember the mov
Don't see it if you like your shows to be clear and linear. the plot is fantastical and hard to follow. but it is never boring
See it if you enjoy avant garde theater with good performances , and good music. Bowie's music well interpreted here. The staging is clever.
Don't see it if you require traditional story telling.
See it if you're a Bowie fan, you like seeing new talent (Sofia Caruso), you're looking for something different.
Don't see it if you can't sit still for 2 hours, you don't like weird, you don't like projections, you're not a Bowie fan.
See it if You don't think you need to understand something to be captivated by it. You want to erase Elsa Mars's rendition of two songs from your mind
Don't see it if You think you're going to see Mamma Mia Bowie-style.
See it if you like experimental, non-linear and non plot-driven theatre.
Don't see it if you want your musical theatre to be clear and linear and "entertaining."
See it if You love David Bowie, and don't care whether or not a musical has a plot.
Don't see it if You require a plot and dislike experimental music theater.
See it if Great David Bowie music, imaginative
Don't see it if Confusing, disjointed
"Essentially one big pop song written for the stage...This ought to be a liberating conceit, but the story demands constantly to be taken seriously…It also feels at times like the music has had all the wind knocked out of it...The direction and design provide some blessed relief...Incredibly, for a work marshaling so much talent and exciting so much anticipation, Lazarus lacks inspiration of all things, and that’s the hardest thing to forgive here."
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"Unlike your typical jukebox musical, there also doesn’t seem to be an extensive effort to connect the lyrics of the songs to what is going on in the scene beforehand...the story is not 'Lazarus’ strongest suit...Given the right frame of mind – it helps to be a Bowie fan, and to have seen the movie or read the book – the story is a tantalizing mystery."
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"'Lazarus' is captivating, but not necessarily to everyone’s immediate taste and not without occasionally dry and/or confounding patches...This is also to say that the logic of 'Lazarus' often crosses into the illogical — it helps to liken this show not to standard stage musicals but music videos. Yet if music videos are often the driver of the show’s charm, it is also the source of some befuddlement."
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"It will be many years before we see a jukebox musical as unapologetically weird as 'Lazarus,' an almost incomprehensible and intriguing new play...This should be a terrible show. It seems unlikely that it is what its collaborators imagined, and what they have created makes little sense. But they are so extravagantly talented and the performers undertake what’s asked of them with such verve that it’s nearly impossible not to be persuaded and at least a little thrilled."
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"It’s the best jukebox musical ever. That may not sound like much of a compliment, but when you put David Bowie‘s musical catalogue at the service of book writers Bowie and Enda Walsh and director Ivo van Hove, the result is more than unique. It’s terrific must-see theater."
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"What it all means, or is supposed to mean, is for them to know and you to find out, although after two intermissionless hours you might no longer feel the need to know. The assorted components of the production team are unquestionably visionary. Sometimes, alas, the collective vision isn't quite realized....Perhaps they shall continue to work on the material elsewhere...At this point, though, 'Lazarus' is uninvolving, mighty odd, and you can't get a ticket."
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"'Lazarus' is far from being the most lucid show around…Luckily, van Hove has created captivating stage images that kept us leaning in even when we didn't know what they meant. And the music rocks…Of course, fitting the songs into the book is less of a problem when the book isn't all that coherent to begin with…Michael C. Hall, Cristin Milloti, and Michael Esper are all in great voice and throw themselves into their performances with passionate abandon."
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"It would be ridiculous to describe it as another jukebox musical...a riveting multimedia meditation — a visceral, disturbing, hallucinatory experience that’s as nonlinear and chameleonic as the rock star himself...Some songs and avant-garde techniques may seem like throwbacks. But this is urgent, stirring, genuine rock art — musical theater like nothing that has fallen to Earth before."
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