David Byrne returns to Broadway with immersive musical "Here Lies Love"
NEW YORK -- David Byrne is back on Broadway with "Here Lies Love," a new show that blurs the lines between theater, music and art.
Byrne's musical and artistic journey during and after his time with the Talking Heads in the 1970s and '80s has been innovative and eclectic, earning him an Oscar, Grammy and Emmy Award.
CBS2's Dave Carlin sat down with Byrne to talk about "Here Lies Love," the immersive Broadway production that he started a decade ago in collaboration with Fatboy Slim, set in a disco.
"All the dancing and all the stuff going on, you go, is there an emotional core to this thing?" Byrne said.
He found that core by centering the story on former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos.
Dark undertones offset the exuberance of the 90-minute show.
"Here Lies Love" covers a rise to power, then a fall and exile that was mired in personal issues, corruption and death.
Byrne calls it a cautionary tale.
"It seems more relevant now in the world than it was when I wrote it," Byrne said. "So maybe we can learn something from what happened in the Philippines."
"Here Lies Love" took so long to get to Broadway because of its expensive, unique staging.
On the road to Broadway, Byrne's musical faced a challenge -- a debate over the amount of live music in it versus pre-recorded. Byrne and company reached an agreement with the American Federation of Musicians' Local 802 to employ 12 of its union members.
"Would you say now that you are now a Broadway guy?" Carlin asked.
"Broadway is still a bit of a new animal for me," Byrne said. "How you can do storytelling in a theater and whether it's like [Byrne's previous Broadway show] 'American Utopia,' where you turn a concert into a storytelling thing or this, where it's like a dance party becomes a storytelling thing. Yeah, I think there's so many possibilities in the theater that are probably yet to be tapped."
At age 71, back on Broadway, Byrne says this feels right, and he's not about to slow down.
