‘Sunset Blvd:’ The Most Galvanizing, Exhilarating, Invigorating, Triumphant Theatre Of the Season

“I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.”

This is just one of the many oft-quoted Norma Desmond lines from Billy Wilder’s classic Hollywood comic-tragedy Sunset Boulevard, released in August of 1950. Written by Wilder, Charles Brackett, and D.M. Marshman, the film starred the great silent screen star Gloria Swanson, who had not made a film in close to a decade, opposite rising star William Holden, looking for the right breakout role. Joe Gilles would be it.

Although both Wilder and Brackett would later say that Swanson was their first choice for Norma, they had approached Mae West, Greta Garbo, Pola Negri, Clara Bow, Norma Shearer and Mary Pickford—they all turned it down. As for Joe, Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift were pursued.

In the end, Swanson and Holden were the perfect Norma and Joe. Wilder created an audacious masterpiece of cinema that spoke directly to the industry, how magical yet cutthroat and viciously forgetful it could be. How aging female actors were discarded for younger versions. How the excessive, overly dramatic lives depicted onscreen were often mirrored in celebrity behavior off-screen.

In the early ‘90s, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black, and Christopher Hampton adapted Wilder’s pic into a sweeping Broadway musical, something America’s greatest composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim had tried to do in the 1960s. He then aborted plans when Wilder himself argued that it would need to be an opera, not a musical, since it’s about “a dethroned queen.”

Patti LuPone and Kevin Anderson opened the show on the West End in a version directed by Trevor Nunn. Attending on opening night, Billy Wilder said of LuPone, “She’s a star from the moment she walks on stage.” Mixed reviews followed, but LuPone received raves. The show closed for a few weeks for revisions and reopened with Betty Buckley and John Barrowman. The American premiere opened in Los Angeles with Glenn Close as Norma and Alan Campbell as Joe and received raves. For Broadway, Webber fired LuPone, who was contracted to play Norma, and gave the part to Close. LuPone then sued Webber and received a $1 million settlement and has forever since badmouthed him. Close won the Tony as did the show in a year without competition—only two original musicals opened.

Many a diva went on to play Norma on Broadway including Buckley, Petula Clark, and Elaine Page. The L.A. production would see another scandal when Faye Dunaway was announced to replace Close, but the producers announced she could not sing the role. Dunaway filed a lawsuit which was settled, and the amount of the win never disclosed.

All the above abridged history is to convey that the show was mired in drama both off-stage and on.

Sunset Boulevard, now stylized Sunset Blvd., has been madly and ingeniously reimagined in a minimalist, modern/old-Hollywood, meta-blend by the wildly talented Brit director Jamie Lloyd and brought over from the West End. The production is a deliberately distorted but loving valentine to the original film (and movies, in general), and this incarnation gifts New York audiences one of the greatest stage performances of our time, probably of all-time. The show swept the Olivier Awards last year. It deserves to sweep the Tonys, too.

This production is the most galvanizing, exhilarating, invigorating, triumphant theatre you will experience this season. Period.

There are moments in a theater-lover’s life when he/she/they know they’re experiencing something beyond magical, something that sends a mad tingle throughout your body, something truly transcendent. It’s happened a handful of times for me. Patti LuPone in Evita as a kid. Peter O’Toole commanding the stage in Pygmalion (despite his inebriation). Meryl Streep as Mother Courage in Central Park. A few others.

Nicole Scherzinger’s bold, multi-faceted, ferocious performance, teeming with pent-up sexual tension and a fervent desire to return to what she loves, is the stuff of instant legend. She may have just opened here, but she’s making her mark the way Merman, LuPone, Peters, Lansbury and so many of the best stage actors have done—as one of (to paraphrase the show) the greatest stars of all.

I know I’m not alone in my gushing as critics have already heralded her work with more superlatives than can fill a thesaurus. A true star holds the audience in the palm of their hands and has them hanging on their every utterance in anticipation—that’s what she does.

On a second sit, I was struck with the nuances and her total embodiment. She gives everything, metaphorically leaping off the highest cliff and—at her own perfect pace—gliding zigzaggedly to her now hopeful destination, grabbing us along for the ride as we observe in amazement, mesmerized, not wanting to blink for fear of missing a wink or a glare, and praying she’ll stay forever.

Lloyd’s ambitious rethink of both the show and Norma inject the piece with the heft of film history—a relatively young art form that’s a little over 100 years old. The pioneers created silent movies where the actors had to almost crawl into the camera since their faces told and sold the stories—especially when it came to melodramas and romances. The talkies ruined the careers of some actors who were seen as too gestur-y, too emotional in their facial expression. Stardom was fleeting. Norma exists in the post-WW2 ’40s where many actors were finding a new home, on the small screen. Meanwhile cinema mavericks were widening the screens and inventing new sound equipment to try and compete. Big screen movies refused to die and still refuse to die, despite home entertainment, pandemics, streaming and the fact that film is now often reduced to clips on social media apps.

The genius of Scherzinger’s Norma is that she channels each important era — the silents, the late 40s/early 50s when the piece is actually set, the ’60s when “aging” stars like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford found vehicles where they could chew scenery and bring in a crowd, the ‘70s/early ‘80s when female driven roles were numerous and celebrated — and today, a time in flux for cinema, but a time when, thanks to TikTok, an entire new generation can discover who these mavericks of yore were, if only via small clips.

This new Norma has the weight of an entire industry/art form on her incredibly fit shoulders, and she brilliantly manages to convey all of it in a perfectly towering manner, belting out the songs in a way that has never been heard before but always capturing the pathos, joy, longing and even the sense of humor inherent in Norma. Thanks to Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom’s astonishingly good video captures, we often experience her raw emotions, appropriately enough, in close up.

The multimedia use is such a vital part of Lloyd’s vision from the actual credit sequence to the various close ups and medium shots, we get this docu-cine-sense explored that must be experienced to be fully appreciated.

This Sunset itself sifts what’s necessary from the best of the original show (a couple of superficial songs are chucked) and stays close to Wilder’s classic while adding modern, meta touches that ingeniously comment on both the state of cinema, then and now, the perpetual brutality of the entertainment industry as well as society’s disregard for women over 40. All themes in many a Wilder pic.

In a key scene where Norma is reunited with DeMille on the set of his latest picture, she encounters an old friend running the lights who hits her with a spot. As the lights wash over her, she appears orgasmic. Moviemaking is her ultimate fulfillment. She is where she belongs.

And with Scherzinger as Norma it becomes more difficult to understand why Joe wouldn’t stay with this far more fascinating —albeit egocentric and delusional woman—unless we contextualize. In an alternate universe where Norma’s fans are really awaiting her return (and honestly who’s to say they wouldn’t embrace that), Joe and Norma might stand a chance. As written, Norma must devolve into madness, and what a magnificent descent it is thanks to director and star.

Lloyd’s team is teeming with talent from Fabian Aloise’s effortlessly sexy and dexterous choreography to Adam Fisher’s incredible sound design to Jack Knowles genius lighting design— knowing just when and how to sensationally spotlight our leading lady—the entire tech group should be applauded.

And the entire ensemble is chock full of some of the best talent Broadway has to offer.

Tom Francis manages Joe’s sardonic quips with precision and expertise. He gives us a Joe in conflict–about his career, about Norma, about Betty, about his place in Hollywood and the world. It’s stunning work, and Francis shows tremendous promise. He should have a long career in all mediums.

The ever-terrifying Max von Mayerling is even more menacing in this production, thanks to David Thaxton’s fully-committed turn. But he also elicits our compassion in the later scenes when, through song, he explains his backstory.

There are so many seemingly incidental characters from the film and original production that are much more fully drawn in this staging from Diego Andres Rodriguez’s sweet turn as Artie to Tyler Davis’ all-business Sheldrake to Grace Hodgett Young as the ambitious Betty Schaefer.

“I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.”

Returning to this infamous line, I wonder what Norma would think of people watching films on their cell phones. Would she bitch and moan as she does about talkies destroying the magic of silent cinema? Or would she be too busy making her own TikTok and Insta videos, shot by Max, finding an entirely new audience?

My bet is that this Norma would survive and thrive.

Sunset Boulevard is currently playing at the St. James Theatre (246 W. 44^th St, NYC).  For tickets: https://sunsetblvdbroadway.com.