Irish playwright Enda Walsh teams up with David Bowie

He delighted with Disco Pigs, bamboozled with Ballyturk, and took a Tony award for Once — now Irish playwright Enda Walsh is collaborating with no less than David Bowie.

Fri, 03 Apr, 2015 - 01:00

Des O’Driscoll

According to The New York Times, the duo are in the process of writing a play inspired by The Man Who Fell To Earth, the 1976 film starring Bowie that was itself an adaptation of a science-fiction novel by Walter Tevis.

The play will reportedly feature new songs from the 68-year-old British musician, whose music was absent from the original film due to contract issues; the soundtrack instead had tunes from the likes of Roy Orbison and Bing Crosby.

“It’s going to be a play with characters and songs,” said James C Nicola, artistic director of New York Theatre Workshop.

“I’m calling it music theatre, but I don’t really know what it’s going to be like, I just have incredible trust in their creative vision.”

Currently titled Lazarus, the play marks a resurrection in the New York theatre world for Bowie, following his turn in The Elephant Man in 1980.

Walsh, meanwhile, has more recent form on Broadway, being widely feted for his adaptation of the film Once, which won a slew of awards in 2012.

It’s also the latest work in an eclectic range of projects for the Dublin-born 47-year-old, whose artistic breakthrough came during his years living in Cork in the mid-1990s.

Next week his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Twits opens at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

Hairy. Nasty. Mean. Filthy. Cruel. Scheming. Terrible. Horrid. Smelly. Vile. THE TWITS ARE COMING #TheTwits http://t.co/A81NpGKw7G
— Royal Court (@royalcourt) April 2, 2015