New Immersive Show Stylishly Showcases David Bowie’s Sound and Vision

‘David Bowie: You’re Not Alone’ Lightroom, LondonTen years after his premature demise, aged 69, David Bowie, the Thin White Duke himself, remains as seductive a figure as he has ever been. 2026 is celebrating him in some style. Visitors to London can go to his recently opened childhood home in Bromley, a southern suburb of the city; head eastwards to the David Bowie Center at the V & A East, which features his personal archive of 80,000 items; and, for the next few months, wander over to the Lightroom in King’s Cross, which is staging an all-singing, all-dancing show, “You’re Not Alone.” It is an impressionistic and dazzling mash-up of concert footage, much of it previously unseen, interview snippets, and expensive and lavishly designed special effects, all of which create a kaleidoscopic and immersive experience.The show, which runs just over an hour, consists of simultaneous projections over four vast walls in the Lightroom building, sometimes recreating a theater or stadium, and at other times offering something more surreal. It is helped by a peerless sound design that enables the audience, who are placed in the center of the room, to feel as if they are truly witnessing a Bowie gig, complete with the erstwhile Ziggy Stardust in one of his many personae. Unsurprisingly, most of the attention is paid to him in his Seventies heyday — cue recreations of everything from “Heroes” to “Rebel Rebel” — but there’s also a fair amount of later footage, too, which usefully contextualises the earlier performance snippets.There have, of course, been many similar attempts at recreating the giddy thrill of live performance on the parts of much-loved and equally dead musicians. I suffered through a truly dire exercise in necrophilia in London last year, “Elvis Evolution,” which gave every impression of having run out of money and ideas during the course of production. Visitors were initially promised an AI-based recreation of Elvis himself in holographic form but, by the time that disappointed ticket buyers came to give their feedback on the whole miserable experience, the consensus was that the King have been posthumously insulted.No such judgement likely awaits “You’re Not Alone,” which has been co-directed by Mark Grimmer and Tom Wexler and conceived and designed by 59 Studio. Mr. Grimmer was responsible for the similar wizardry that could be found during the “David Bowie Is” show, for which he served as Creative Director, which concluded its run at the Brooklyn Museum in 2018, five years after it began at London’s V & A Museum. He has clearly immersed himself in all things Bowie, and one of the many satisfying aspects of the show is that it represents a deep dive into the late, great artist’s many enthusiasms without being remotely gimmicky. It eschews AI, as far as I could tell, and instead, with the support of the Bowie estate, resurrects the star for everyone from obsessive devotees (guilty as charged) to casual admirers who might occasionally stream a “best of” compilation on Spotify.Of course, the music is the main focus here, and there are satisfyingly meaty chunks of live performance interspersed with dizzying, thrilling visual coups de theatre. At one point, for instance, Bowie — a noted bibliophile — remarks “taking away all the theatrics, I’m a writer,” and an apparently endless library rivalling Borges’, complete with flying books, appears in front of the audience. There are witty touches — in homage to Bowie’s eccentric, cocaine-induced diets in the mid-1970s, milk and red peppers are at one point projected at giant size — and the excerpts from Bowie interviews are apposite and short enough to intrigue rather than bore. As he remarked, “we all, to a certain extent, create our lives”, and the dedication to showing all sides of a man who did more than most to create his entire existence is praiseworthy.There will, of course, be those who find the whole experience overwhelming. Certainly, it needs more than one viewing to take it all in — I watched it twice back-to-back for the purposes of this review and would happily have returned for a third go round, had the need to file this piece not intruded — and there are omissions that will strike some as surprising, even regrettable. (No “Life on Mars,” no “Ashes to Ashes,” no “Where Are We Now,” and barely anything from his triumphant, despairing swansong, “Blackstar.”) Yet it is both ungrateful and pointless to complain about what is not present in “You’re Not Alone,”given how generously and comprehensively it portrays the work, if not much of the life, of such a vital artist. Although no further dates have been announced for the show after it finishes in London in October, it would be surprising if it did not appear in Bowie’s adopted home of New York in some form in early 2027, given how fervent his American fanbase remains. Yet before then, true Bowie obsessives should hurry to book transatlantic flights to fulfil a final pilgrimage to his memory. Alexander Larman’s “Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie” is now available from Pegasus Books.

New Immersive Show Stylishly Showcases David Bowie’s Sound and Vision

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