The director of the new revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Blvd.” takes the final line from Billy Wilder’s noir classic – “I’m ready for my close-up!” – and repeats it ad nauseam. The line is spoken only once on stage, at the end. But from the opening of Jamie Lloyd’s ridiculously foggy and overwrought production, this director gives us close-ups not only of all the principal actors, but every chorister as well.
Putting a video camera(s) on stage and having live actors taped so that their faces can be magnified on big screens has become the most tiresome directorial crutch of this century. The musical “Sunset Blvd.” opened Sunday at the St. James Theatre after a run in London, and the camera work is so overused it can only be hoped that it inspires a moratorium on utilizing such recording devices in the theater.
All those close-ups take our attention away from what’s happening elsewhere on stage. They also expose a lot of things we should not be noticing. Those elements include the ugly around-the-jaw mics, the tape that secures those mics to an actor’s neck, the actors’ sweat — and also their acne. It is quite a youthful cast.
Jamie Lloyd’s revival of the 1993 musical by Lloyd Webber, Don Black and Christopher Hampton won raves and many Olivier Awards in London. There and now on Broadway, it stars Nicole Scherzinger in the role of Norma Desmond, the silent film star looking to return to the screen.
Photographs from the West End production made it clear that Scherzinger wasn’t wearing Norma’s signature turban, nor was she made up to look like some old gargoyle a la Gloria Swanson in the film or Glenn Close on stage. In this revival, Norma is now 40, not 50. Her hair is straight and long. She wears a simple black dress. The sets and costume by Soutra Gilmour are a sophisticated study in chiaroscuro, a nod to the black-and-white film that is the musical’s source material.
For me, the big surprise of this “Sunset Blvd.” is Scherzinger’s outrageously campy over-the-top performance. Like so much of this revival, it is both minimal and excessive. Her look is minimal while her acting goes way beyond anything delivered by either Swanson or Close, neither of whom offered particularly subtle studies in mature womanhood.
When Scherzinger sings, she comes up with drag queen gestures that haven’t been seen since Susan Hayward lip-synched “I’ll Plant My Own Tree” in “Valley of the Dolls.”
She’s also horny. When Gloria Swanson’s Norma invites William Holden’s Joe McGillis to spend the night in a bedroom above her garage, it is not obvious that she’s on the make. Scherzinger, on the other hand, delivers the invitation with such Cruella de Vil lust that she gets a big laugh from the audience.
And when she doesn’t get a laugh at other dramatic moments, she flips her hair around in a “take that, biiiitch!” gesture that provokes guffaws. It’s not just her exaggerated line readings, it’s that she’s being taped in close-up — so we see her bulging eyes and lips, her flicking tongue. This Norma wants to be serviced by Joe (Tom Francis) so badly that when she sits down to spread her legs wide, Scherzinger forgets for a moment that this musical is “Sunset Blvd.,” not “Cabaret.”
A former Pussycat Doll, Scherzinger has the vocal chops to make showstoppers of “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye.” The sound pouring out of rock stadium size amps at the St. James is much like that of the Pussycats: lush, loud, homogenized and processed with excessive reverb. But that’s not enough: when Scherzinger sings, she’s suddenly enveloped in billowing fog. It’s a not-so-subtle reminder that this story is set in smoggy Los Angeles.
Neither “Cats” nor “Sunset Blvd.” got great reviews upon their world premieres. “Cats” became a huge hit regardless — “Sunset Blvd.,” not so much.
Lloyd Webber has had quite a year here in New York City. Critics went wild over a new production of his feline show that set the musical at a drag contest. I remained unimpressed, because the songs and the book remained the same: dreadful.
Jamie Lloyd has dropped a few songs from his “Sunset Blvd.,” but he didn’t cut enough. Lloyd Webber brings a verismo verve to Norma’s two aforementioned arias, but ensemble numbers like “Let’s Have Lunch” and “Every Movie’s a Circus” are dead air, pumped up only by Fabian Aloise’s athletic choreography.
Lloyd distracts from the desultory act-two opening “Sunset Boulevard” song by putting a video camera on Francis as he walks around backstage, then takes a stroll in front of the theater on West 44 Street to join the “Sunset Blvd.” chorus. It makes sense that they all need a breath of fresh air — Lloyd uses so many fog machines that they render the St. James uncomfortably warm, humid and stuffy. It may be the first Broadway venue to come down with black mold.
Wilder made his “Sunset Blvd.” almost three-quarters of a century ago, and it’s amazing how much more erotic it is than this stage revival. That’s because Holden comes off as a real stud in the movie. He’s clearly laying both Norma and his new girlfriend Betty, and both women are quite happy.
Francis brings an innocuous boy-next-door quality to the role. When Scherzinger jumps up on his hips at the end of act one, do they have sex or does he lodge a complaint with Actors’ Equity? Francis has even less chemistry with Betty, played by Grace Hodgett Young — dressed like a lady wrestler, complete with braided pigtails. Near the end of the show, when Betty’s gigantic silhouette hovers over Norma and Joe, the lighting design by Jack Knowles brings to mind “The Wiz.” Did that Dorothy forget to leave town when the show closed last summer?
Other weird showbiz references populate Lloyd’s production. After Norma shoots Joe at the end, she’s suddenly covered in blood. Did I miss something? Has she used a knife instead of a gun? Or did she sneak in a little quickie with Joe’s corpse before it fell into the pool?
And why is Scherzinger suddenly channeling Sissy Spacek from “Carrie”?
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