It’s been revealed that David Bowie was working on a new project for the theatre when he died in early 2016.
It was to be a musical set in 18th-century London called 'The Spectator'. Detailed notes have been discovered in his office, which relate to the project. These have now been donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum and will join the rest of Bowie’s archive. This will be available for fans to view when the new David Bowie Centre opens at the V&A East Storehouse in Hackney Wick next week.
Details about the Spectator have been shared with the BBC and it seems Bowie had done a lot of preparatory research for the project. The title was swiped from an early 18th-century periodical (nothing to do with the current political weekly) that commented on the comings and goings of polite London society. Bowie had devoted an entire notebook to stories from the magazine, rating them out of 10.
It also seems he was particularly fascinated by the crime and punishment of that era. In one note, he envisaged a public hanging with "surgeons fighting over corpses". He also considered making Jack Sheppard, a petty thief who had become something of a public hero, one of his main characters. Then there were the Mohocks.
These, it seems, were a kind of Bullingdon Club of the early 1700s. Professor Bob Harris (no not that one), an 18th-century expert at Oxford University, describes the Mohocks as “young men of high social status basically getting drunk in the evening and then attacking people on the streets of London, often women, sometimes elderly Watchmen.”
Harris tells the BBC: "London threw up so many different juxtapositions. Juxtapositions between high and low, between the virtuous and the criminal, and these things existed cheek by jowl. I think it presented so much that was beguiling to contemporaries, but also clearly that Bowie himself found fascinating."
Bowie had a long-held yearning to write for the theatre, an ambition that was fulfilled just before he died – his last public appearance was at the opening night of the off-Broadway production of Lazarus in December 2015.
Who knows what The Spectator could have become? Or even whether it would have ever seen the light of day? Like many great artists, Bowie’s career was filled with projects that for one reason or another were left uncompleted.
Anyway, the V&A’s Bowie Centre is open from September 13. To view an object you can fill in an online form here.
