‘Sunset Blvd.’ Overview: Nicole Scherzinger Steals Broadway With One Look

All that insanity in Gloria Swanson’s eyes on the finish of Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece Sunset Boulevard is amplified to breathtaking lengths in Jamie Lloyd‘s commanding and lovely renovation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical Sunset Blvd. With a career-expanding efficiency that redefines the one-time Dancing With The Stars competitor Nicole Scherzinger as totally as Lloyd’s staging does Lloyd Webber’s musical, the revival opening tonight at Broadway‘s St. James Theatre is a stunner, stark all the time, humorous generally and in the end terrifying.

The musical – which, just like the movie, has heretofore been Sunset Boulevard however is now stylized with Blvd.; to keep away from confusion, I’ll consult with the stage present, previous and current iterations, with the abbreviation – has all the time been one thing of an also-ran within the Lloyd Webber oeuvre, identified principally for 2, three, possibly 4 of its finest songs, an enormous ol’ staircase and the stinging behind-the-scenes feud between the composer and his unique star Patti LuPone manner again within the day.

The present revival, if it does nothing else, ought to put the present’s blended repute to relaxation. With its silent movie-style black & white shade scheme and heavy-shadowed expressionistic sculpting, Sunset Blvd. is sort of in contrast to anything on Broadway at this time, fierce and ferocious.

From the beginning, Lloyd stakes his declare on the fabric, taking out the unique staging’s showy corpse-in-a-pool impact to current our drowned hero Joe merely unzipping himself from a physique bag that we hadn’t even observed earlier than. Initially we is perhaps fooled into considering we’re about to see a rehash of the compelling theatrical concepts the director offered so properly in his presentation of Betrayal with Tom Hiddleston in 2019 and A Doll’s House starring Jessica Chastain in 2023. Stark lightings? Check. Celebrity casting? Check. Chilly and crystalline visuals. Double verify. In reality, Blvd. begins with extra fog than a San Francisco daybreak, the forged largely in angular silhouettes because of side-of-the-stage klieg-like lights.

But a couple of minutes in, with crashes of sound and lightweight and shade and the scrolling of movie-style credit, Lloyd alerts that the minimalism of his different productions will probably be augmented with here-and-there flashes of theatrical derring-do that units Blvd. fairly aside. True, he’s borrowing the hand held digital camera gadget we’ve seen in latest productions of West Side Story and Network – each from director Ivo van Hove – however Blvd. one-ups these productions each in execution and objective. One second of Scherzinger’s narcissistic silent-star has-been Norma Desmond upstaging her costars for a greater digital camera angle tells us just about all we’ll must know concerning the long-ago-faded Hollywood has-been.

Aside from the forged and all that fantastically lit fog, the Blvd. stage has nearly nothing by the use of set furnishings. There’s a big horizontal display that hovers, ceiling-like, over the stage, tilting vertically when a backdrop is required to bear the movie-like close-ups of a determined trying Norma or sad-faced Joe (Tom Francis, boyish and cynical and Scherzinger’s equal each step of the best way), the penniless screenwriter taken in by the older star underneath the guise of script-doctoring a comeback undertaking that Norma believes will probably be her return to the Hollywood A-list.

The plot factors of the story are so acquainted as to have change into one among Hollywood’s foundational tales of itself: Once ensconced in Norma’s decaying Sunset Boulevard mansion, Joe finds the money seize onerous to surrender, to not point out the pity he feels for this used-up human being who deserves higher. Norma, for her half, is a monster, aside from when she isn’t, when the tyrannical facade slips simply sufficient to disclose the attractive, guileless and dream-filled 16-year-old starlet that made the Hollywood that made her. There wouldn’t be a Paramount if not for her, she says, standing in for all of the younger expertise upon which an industry and a metropolis was constructed earlier than being tossed into reminiscence’s gutter.

And whereas some have criticized the beautiful 46-year-old Scherzinger’s casting as Hollywood’s most well-known tossed-aside star this aspect of Baby Jane Hudson, the previous Pussycat Doll’s presence makes Wilder’s unique level all of the extra forcefully: When these on-stage cameras zoom in for cruel close-ups, silently evaluating the outcomes side-by-side on the display with the a lot youthful actress (Hannah Yun Chamberlain) taking part in Norma in her youth, the impact underscores simply how stringent and misogynistic and insane Hollywood’s – and society’s – codes of magnificence really are.

While Joe is relieved to have a spot to dodge collectors, he feels the guilt of a saved man and a true-love eager for Betty (a recent Grace Hodgett Young), the younger Hollywood hopeful with whom he’s undertaken a screenwriting undertaking. She occurs to be the girlfriend of Joe’s finest pal Artie (Diego Andres Rodriguez), one more supply of guilt and angst to issue into the macabre horror of Joe’s “dwelling” life.

While Blvd.‘s e book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton stay kind of trustworthy to Wilder’s movie, Webber’s rating tends towards a melodrama not solely consistent with the movie’s darkish comedic components. The dichotomy was clearly evident within the unique stagings of Sunset Blvd., with elaborate units that featured, for instance, a really very grand staircase down which a turbaned Patti LuPone or Betty Buckley or Glenn Close or Elaine Paige would sweep, an over-the-topness that, whereas definitely not with out enchantment, added one other layer of camp to a musical that was already liable to it.

The solely turban in view throughout Lloyd’s manufacturing is seen in a fast glimpse throughout a exceptional backstage tour that opens the second act of the manufacturing, as Joe, or slightly Tom Francis, leaves his dressing room (the place Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is taking part in on a bit of TV) and makes his manner downstairs and out to the road, stopping to say howdy to his forged mates (the wonderful David Thaxton, as Max, has a Pussycat Dolls poster in his room, a nod to Scherzinger’s resume, and somebody in an impossibly phony chimp costume is standing round for an entrance he’ll by no means make on this manufacturing. (A chimp? If you understand you understand.)

Francis, all of the whereas, is singing the musical’s title track, at the same time as he makes his manner down forty fourth Street previous the marquees of different Broadway productions and eventually again to his personal theater, his each transfer and expression having been seize by digital camera and projected onto the display earlier than our personal eyes. When he lastly takes the stage, a really nonetheless Norma waits for him.

The complete section is finished as a single monitoring shot (courtesy ensemble member and digital camera operator Shayna McPherson) and it’s a exceptional coup de theatre, even when we have now seen it, or one thing related (and lesser) in different productions. And right here, it’s not even probably the most thrilling second of the present: That comes earlier, when Scherzinger, her straight hair hanging lengthy, her solely costume the flimsy black slip she’ll put on by means of the whole manufacturing, stands close to the sting of the stage to belt out the musical’s finest track – “With One Look” – a vocal tour de drive that comes properly earlier than intermission and, on the reviewed efficiency, had a roaring viewers on its toes.

The first of a number of showstoppers, “With One Look” not solely shows Scherzinger’s revelatory vocal expertise, however the good contributions of Lloyd’s wonderful inventive workforce. Soutra Gilmour’s set and costume design – the forged is attired in combine and match black and white costumes that counsel no explicit period, maybe a bit too coyly – whereas Fabian Aloise’s choreography combines up to date dance with the vaguely avant garde motion that has Norma posing at jutting, sharp angles calling to thoughts the weird imagery of a James Whale movie. Jack Knowles (lighting design, very good), Adam Fisher (sound design, wonderful), Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom (video design and cinematography, flawless), and Cheryl Thomas (hair and make-up design, great) are in peak type all through.

And lastly, a word on Lloyd Webber’s rating. With two unique numbers reduce from the revival – “The Lady’s Paying” and “Eternal Youth Is Worth a Little Suffering,” neither an amazing loss – this visually stripped-down (although not precisely to say simplified) staging does what the very best of New York’s City Center’s Encores! productions have all the time performed: Remove muddle, visible and aural, to permit the music to be heard with recent ears. Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Blvd. advantages tremendously from the strategy. “With One Look,” “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” “The Perfect Year,” “The Greatest Star of All,” “New Ways To Dream” and the title track have by no means wanted defending, however the present revival, with musical course and supervision by Alan Williams, polishes even the extra unexceptional numbers of the rating – Every Movie’s a Circus, Surrender, The Perfect Year – into small gems.

Spoiler alerts most likely aren’t mandatory for a story that’s been round for 74 years, and Joe’s emergence from that physique bag on the present’s starting go away nothing to the creativeness, however don’t be fooled into considering Lloyd and his superlative Sunset Blvd. haven’t any surprises left. Wilder’s movie, for all its offbeat humor and quotable zingers, was all the time concerning the ugliness of Hollywood and the monstrous cruelty of an industry that drains its gamers like a vampire does its victims. We can solely think about how tickled Wilder may need been if given the possibility to see the crimson smears everywhere in the blacks and whites and victims of Lloyd’s revival.

Title: Sunset Blvd.
Venue: Broadway’s St. James Theatre
Director: Jamie Lloyd
Book and Lyrics: Don Black and Christopher Hampton
Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Cast: Nicole Scherzinger, Tom Francis, Grace Hodgett Young, David Thaxton, with Olivia Lacie Andrews, Brandon Mel Borkowsky, Shavey Brown, Hannah Yun Chamberlain, Cydney Clark, Raúl Contreras, Tyler Davis, E.J. Hamilton, Sydney Jones, Emma Lloyd, Pierre Marais, Shayna McPherson, Jimin Moon, Justice Moore, Drew Redington, Diego Andres Rodriguez. Mandy Gonzalez will visitor star as ‘Norma Desmond’ at sure choose performances.
Running time: 2 hr 30 min (together with intermission)