Verdict: Required viewing for Bowie fans
Let’s not pretend to be surprised that the David Bowie musical Lazarus is a teeny bit pretentious.
That was certainly the view of many critics when it first appeared in London five years ago. But for those of us who were certified Spiders From Mars, back in the salad days of our misspent youth, it’s still required viewing.
I was certainly sorry to miss Ivo van Hove’s sell-out production when it transferred from New York to London’s King’s Cross Theatre in 2016.
So I leapt at the chance to watch this live recording, which has been released on live-music website dice.fm to coincide with Bowie’s birth and death days (today and Sunday, respectively).
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Streaming until February 28, 50mins originaltheatreonline.com
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This streamed version of A Christmas Carol, which has been The Old Vic’s sell-out Christmas show every year since 2017, is back with Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead and This Life star) playing Scrooge.
The bearded Lincoln cuts a dash. The trouble is, to convince us that he is an unswayable misery, he continually shouts. It’s a tad exhausting. The real star here is Matthew Warchus’s heart-melting production, which I remember filling The Old Vic with flying fruit and veg and its audience – now sadly missing – munching mince pies.
The split-screen editing here is slick, and a hatful of carols and handbells makes a Dickens of a racket. The three ghosts of Christmas are played by women and the childhood of Scrooge is a full psychodrama, with an expanded role for Ebenezer’s cruel dad.
Last modified on Fri 18 Dec 2020 15.02 EST
This supernatural thriller is based on a little-known MR James story about murder and attempted resurrection in a time of plague. Like so many of Jamesâs tales, The Experiment is over in a matter of a few pages: a wife kills her mean husband but tries to conjure his spirit so that she can discover where he hid all his earthly treasure.
Philip Franksâs adaptation turns that lean tale into a richer drama about abuse, revenge, paedophilia and occultist practices without losing any of its tautness. Jamesâs 1931 story takes place in an unspecified past in which there is a âsicknessâ that is believed to refer to the bubonic plague. Here, it is shown to be the Spanish flu of 1918, and a parallel, contemporary plotline features a cash-strapped millennial couple during the Covid lockdown.