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As the audience take their seats, a beautiful young woman appears on stage. She stands behind a shimmering bead curtain, illuminated by a shaft of light — silent, elusive, just out of reach. This is Norma Desmond as Norma Desmond was — as Norma Desmond still is in her own mind. But Norma is now a forgotten star, holed up in her Sunset Boulevard mansion, dumped by the merciless fame machine that is Hollywood.
The genius of Jamie Lloyd’s stunning new production of the 1993 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical (book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton) is the way it rips the story away from its lavish trappings and places it in a drifting, noirish limbo: an empty space crafted by fame. It’s a choice that splices the moody black-and-white palette of Billy Wilder’s original 1950 film with the lush music of the stage show and the dizzying pace of our own celebrity culture. And what nails it is a sensational performance from Nicole Scherzinger.
Sunset Boulevard is a story that reeks of insecurity. Everyone is on the way up (they hope) or on the way down (they fear). Screenwriter Joe Gillis, our narrator, is a case in point. Ironically, his best plot turns out to be the story of his own death, which he unpacks for us in flashback, having stepped out of a body bag. Tom Francis’s Joe is wry and enigmatic, with the sharp tongue of a Chandler character and the dry eyes of a man used to disappointment.
The Hollywood wannabes who flit in and out of his tale form a restless, seething crowd, eloquently choreographed by Fabian Aloise. Much of the action is filmed live (cinematography by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom), with close-ups played out on a huge screen above the stage. Everyone is in thrall to the camera; everyone longs for validation. And at the apex of this pile of human desire and desperation is Scherzinger’s Norma, the silent movie star sidelined by the talkies; the beautiful woman who committed the cardinal sin of passing 40.
In Lloyd’s staging, she exists in a cavernous, liminal space (designed by Soutra Gilmour), slinking into view from the smoky recesses of the stage. Spotting the hapless Joe outside her mansion, she insists he works with her on her comeback script.
Scherzinger is magnetic: imperious, unpredictable, twining herself around Francis in a tango one moment, playfully flirting with a camera the next. She’s not afraid to look scary or ridiculous, but there’s also a strung-out vulnerability about her. And when she sings, she pins you to your seat with the harrowing intensity of her delivery.
Lloyd and his creative team use the interplay of film, light and shadow to sculpt the space and shape the action, but also to demonstrate how the screen image can warp lived experience. This can be dazzling — as when Francis live-broadcasts a number striding along the street outside before bursting on to the stage. And it can be mercilessly intrusive — as when the camera zooms in on Scherzinger’s pitifully deranged Norma at the end. An exhilarating reading that reframes the psychological landscape of the original for our own image-obsessed age.
★★★★★
To January 6, sunsetboulevardwestend.com
