For me, seeing a screen in a theater is like seeing a bank logo at Pride. We don’t need that here! This space is about living, breathing, three-dimensional people. And I’m not just talking about the tiny cell-phone screens that light up in the rows around me—though, obviously, put those away. I mean when a Broadway production devotes a chunk of its stage to images of the actors instead of the actors themselves. When I go to the theater, I like to feel myself disappear into the production, and a screen is inherently distancing—a copy of the real thing. Every once in a while, like in Ivo van Hove’s production of Network, the presence of a screen makes diegetic sense. But mostly, like in Ivo van Hove’s production of West Side Story, the staging makes you wonder if you should have just gone to an IMAX theater instead—a place where person-to-person empathy is supposed to be subsumed by spectacle. But if any production can make an argument for these screens as experience-enhancers rather than mere shiny toys, it’s Sunset Blvd., the new staging of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which feels like the trendiest thing to see on Broadway this holiday season.
When the 23-foot LCD screen swung down from the ceiling to magnify Tom Francis’s harried face in the show’s early going, I was a little bit relieved, against my traditionalist instincts. You see, I had one of the worst seats in the house at the St. James Theatre—any farther away and I’d be watching The Hills Of California across the street. And because I was so high up, and could see no details whatsoever of anyone’s face, I appreciated the Jumbotron-esque assistance provided by the compact camera rig Francis held in front of him. But as it kept returning, I was confronted by the inevitable question: Do you look at the real thing, or the larger-than-life thing? It was only at the start of the second act, when that decision was made for the audience, that I could embrace the full extent of the possibility that the Broadway camera offered.
Sunset Blvd. is, in fact, a musical version of the 1950 masterpiece directed by Billy Wilder, about a reclusive former star of the silent movie era who takes in a hungry screenwriter in a doomed attempt at a comeback. (Sorry, return.) Out of all his efforts in his meandering post-Phantom era, the mid-’90s Sunset Boulevard starring Patti LuPone in the West End and then Glenn Close in America came the closest to being a classic Andrew Lloyd Webber phenomenon. That’s still not saying much. While Close drew crowds on Broadway and the show won a bunch of Tonys in a very weak year, the production burned money and ran aground when it no longer had a famous lead to advertise. Close reprised her role in a very limited revival in 2017, but this 2024 West End transfer is essentially the American reintroduction to a bright spot of late-period Lloyd Webber—and not a moment too soon, given Phantom’s recent bow and the disaster that was his Bad Cinderella.
The plot is loyal to the movie’s, keeping its post-WWII setting and preserving all the sickness of its ending. Avoiding the corny '80s synths that define Lloyd Webber’s most enduring works, the score is superficially period appropriate—rat-pack jazz and pre-rock’n’roll vocal pop. (Don Black and Christopher Hampton wrote the words.) Francis is more boyish and spry than the movie’s William Holden in the screenwriter role, somebody you could buy was an idealist until very, very recently. But it’s Nicole Scherzinger, former Pussycat Doll and TV talent-show fixture, who’s understandably dominated the marketing campaign and drawn young crowds to the balcony to see her take on a much more outwardly glamorous Norma Desmond.
A princess of pop-culture trash, Scherzinger is the rare artist for whom Lloyd Webber’s schmaltz is a step up in substance, and she is trying so, so hard to earn a Tony that she can put next to her 2012 Cosmopolitan award for “Ultimate Fun Fearless Female.” She uses the camera to her advantage in her early scenes, mugging and flirting to show us some of Norma’s old silver-screen charisma, and she gets laughs with little bursts of eccentricity that worked for the crowd but, to me, never felt all that grounded in consistent character. (Former Opera Phantom David Thaxton, as her servant, does a lot of heavy lifting to give the show more of a foreboding energy.) In the second act, however, Scherzinger proves herself as a monstrously effective star, as Norma returns to Paramount before spiraling to a tragic rock bottom. At the climax, she pushes herself to an emotional limit that seems impossible to reach on a nightly basis, but the money song comes a little earlier—"As If We Never Said Goodbye,” when Norma rediscovers her love for being in movies.
This ballad competes with Lloyd Webber’s “Memory” as the composer’s most earth-shaking bombast, and when Scherzinger stands by herself on a fogged-up stage, she reaches her full potential as a diva. Within the context of the story, the song is crucial to making Norma more than just a crazy old lady, but live, in a theater, it’s something greater. Scherzinger’s pipes carry all the way up to the cheap seats and almost bowl you over. The room fills to the brim with an almost-tangible noise that you can scarcely believe comes out of something as tiny and faraway as Scherzinger’s throat. I was sad when it was over, because I immediately wanted to hear it again, and I knew that was impossible. That’s the curse of live theater.
Sunset Blvd.’s highs are a credit to the performers and to Lloyd Webber, of course, but there’s another Lloyd whose taste and reputation have embedded itself in every aspect of the show and helped make it capital-C Cool. Jamie Lloyd, the director, is a brand unto his own (they even sell mugs with “The Jamie Lloyd Company” on them at the St. James), and in doing a Lloyd Webber show he’s helped create a marriage of opposites whose contrasts only increase the impact of each man's sensibilities.
This is the third production of Jamie Lloyd’s I’ve seen—I’ll never forget his 2019 Broadway revival of Betrayal with Tom Hiddleston, because I ate a viral spicy tortilla chip beforehand and spent the whole show on the verge of fainting—and I feel confident saying he doesn’t have a campy cell in his body. His contributions are all stoicism and understatement, eschewing things like entrances or sets or lights to present a sparse final product that narrows an audience’s focus. There’s some degree of stylish dance in Sunset Blvd., but there’s no mansion mise en scène or Paramount studio set. The monochrome visuals are nothing but the suffocating darkness, the actors, the screen, and our imaginations. The theater is aggressively microphoned so the performers can comfortably drop down to a whisper. Characters will remain on stage like ghosts when they're not in a scene, haunting the subtext of other interactions. And here, that restrained approach works to perfection, emphasizing the seediness and danger of the setting while outright refusing to compete with Lloyd Webber’s music for attention. To add elaborate construction and maximalist color to the loud neediness of his melodies would be a recipe for overstimulation. This staging brings balance to the force.
But then there's the one spot where Lloyd intends to dazzle the audience with his own ingenuity, and it's the other song in Sunset Blvd. that's worth the price of admission: the title track at the open the second act. If you're determined enough and time it right, you can hear at least some of the vocals live without ever buying a ticket. When the entr'acte instrumental begins, the on-stage screen shows Francis in his dressing room, and then the camera follows him through the theater as he passes other actors who flash little Easter eggs. (Thaxton is staring intensely at a Pussycat Dolls photo on his mirror, for example.) It's cute, and going into the show I thought that's all there was. But then Francis stepped outside, onto 44th Street, to begin singing "Sunset Boulevard"—a catching-you-up-on-the-plot belter that brilliantly captures his character's anxiety and self-loathing. And then Francis kept walking. And walking. And walking. Until the screen showed him half a block away in the Shubert Alley, with most of the ensemble prepped to join him on the walk back.
Anyone who understands either the precision necessary for live theater or the difficulty of simply walking through Times Square should grasp how impressive it is for Francis and the crew to extend their production across the country's busiest streets on a nightly basis. For me in the audience, even though I could only watch on the screen, the risk felt palpable. What if some random person wrecked the shot? What if Francis got clipped by a bike?
Or what if the tech shorted out? Is it still theater if the performer has no way of knowing if the audience stops watching? Is it impossible to feel as connected to a shiny, two-dimensional image as you would the sweat and spit and flesh of a fellow person? Maybe, I think—enough that I don't want 9 p.m. on Broadway to turn into a labyrinth of actors and cameras all trying the same gimmick. But I must admit that the awe I felt at the gutsiness of this sequence was the flip side to the sadness I experienced when "As If We Never Said Goodbye” concluded. It's all fleeting. If you're not perfect the first time, you never will be.
