On a recent weekday morning, the Belgian director Ivo van Hove sat at a corner table in the bar of the Standard Hotel. A bound script of “Lazarus,” his latest stage project, nestled on the table beside his Americano.

With his planed features and silvering hair, Mr. van Hove is perfectly nice to look at. But it was almost impossible to eye anything except that script.

“Lazarus,” which begins performances on Wednesday, Nov. 18, and opens on Dec. 7, is one of the most anticipated works of the fall season and easily the most closely guarded. Few details have emerged, but the involvement of David Bowie, who has composed several original songs, revamped old ones and written the book with the Irish playwright Enda Walsh, guaranteed avid interest.

Mr. Bowie, who declined to comment for this article, conceived the show as a sort of sequel to “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” the 1963 Walter Tevis novel that inspired the 1976 Nicolas Roeg film, in which Mr. Bowie starred as Thomas Newton, a louche, orange-haired extraterrestrial. Here, Newton will be played by Michael C. Hall, late of “Dexter” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”