Theater Review by Ron Fassler . . .

Well, knock me over with a feather. I really liked Jamie Lloyd’s sexually charged, visually exhilarating, and highly conceptualized Sunset Boulevard, now shortened to Sunset Blvd. I will confess that I have never before liked it as a musical, having seen it on Broadway in 1994 with Glenn Close and in its concert-style 2016 revival, in which Close also starred. Resembling neither of those, what’s currently onstage at the St. James Theatre is a sizzling deconstruction pitched at a high flame of camp and a simmering boil of strangeness. An enormous hit in London, both its stars Nicole Scherzinger (Norma Desmond) and Tom Francis (Joe Gillis) are back in roles that won them Olivier Awards for Best Actor and Actress in a Musical, along with David Thaxton (Max von Mayerling) and Grace Hodgett Young (Betty Schaeffer) recreating their performances. Does Lloyd’s direction make the case that Sunset Boulevard is some buried treasure? Not in the least. It’s still a mediocre musical with the bare wisps of a book that’s little more than the best lines from Billy Wilder and Charles Bracket’s 1950 screenplay reassembled. And I think I can safely go unchallenged when I say that it’s a score with only two songs in it (the two big solos for Norma, “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye”). The rest are completely disposable, including the crappy title tune that is turned on its head in this production. The song is done every night (and at matinees) sung and shot live on video outside the theatre on West 44th Street where it makes asbolutely no sense whatsoever. Ordinarily, I’d be tearing my hair out. In Jamie Lloyd’s insanely capable hands, I freaking loved it.

Nicole Scherzinger (Norma Desmond) and Hannah Yun Chamberlain (Young Norma) in Sunset Blvd.

First, Nicole Scherzinger is a knockout as Norma Desmond in spite of being all wrong for the part, one of many dichotomies that are riddled throughout this production. And guess what? I don’t care! This former lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls is sensational even though she is hardly typical casting as a former silent screen film star who is supposed to be washed up and “old” by the age of fifty. Her age has been changed to forty here, but it makes no difference since Scherzinger is so youthful and vibrant, moving like someone half her age. There is such raw theatricality on hand that the jumble of weirdness is part of its . . .can I even say charm? Though I was impressed by Lloyd’s previous stripped-down productions of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal (2019) and Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac (2022)—I was a little less so with Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (2023). I felt well onto his tricks by then and they were starting to have diminishing results. So, I went into Sunset Blvd. somewhat trepidatiously, especially since I was aware it employed video screens and mics placed close to the actor’s mouths for whispering techniques. I was afraid of overkill.

Instead we get an inventive, bold, audacious and deeply theatrical, yet still flawed Sunset Blvd.—and I love it for that. It’s stylized high camp, a jumble of sensibilities, and yet it somehow manages to work. I’m sure it won’t please everyone, certainly not purists, and perhaps not even Andrew Lloyd Webber fans. But it achieves something unique in that it takes wild chances and shoots for moon coming damn near close. And I admire it for that.

Tom Francis in foreground, Nicole Scherzinger on screen.

I won’t regurgitate the plot as it’s as old as the hills by now. I will say that in Tom Francis’s performance as Joe Gillis we get a somewhat new take on the character in his countenance and body language. The snuffed out optimism of a formerly fresh-faced young guy is devastating here. And he’s got a great voice that he uses well. So does David Thaxton as Max, who goes for broke in just the right ways his director requires him to. Less successful among this quartet is Grace Hodgett Young’s Betty, a role that’s hard to make anything less than insipid. She’s not helped by an unflattering costume that makes her look like she wandered in from a soccer match (that she lost). The ensemble, as choregraphed by Fabian Aloise, consist of some excellent singers and dancers. They aren’t given a great deal to do, but the often fevered dancing they enact feel right in the Through the Looking Glass-style atmosphere that Lloyd has envisioned. 

As opposed to John Napier’s original three-ton set of Norma’s dilapidated mansion that floated above and around the stage, there is practically no scenery at all (what’s there is beautifully evoked by Soutra Gilmour. Everything is done with lights and the video camera (not overused, by the way), all done to premium effect. Bravo to its design by Jack Knowles and to the video design & cinematography by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom. 

Tom Francis and company in “Sunset Blvd.”

In the end, you have Nicole Scherzinger’s thrilling take on Norma Desmond, captivating in its musicality, as well as Jamie Lloyd’s stunning visual feast that is accomplished with little more than lights and a camera. To quote Max von Mayerling at the play’s end—“Action!”

Sunset Blvd. is playing at the St. James Theatre, 246 West 46th Street, NYC. For further information, please visit: https://sunsetblvdbroadway.com.

Photos by Marc Brenner.

Headline photo: Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd.