"Sunset Boulevard" is a Stunningly Creative Mess of a Show

Jamie Lloyd's minimalist adaptation has a lot of bold ideas about what live theatre could be, but they are largely out of place.

Photo by Marc Brenner

“You see, this is my life. It always will be. There’s nothing else. Just us and the cameras and those wonderful people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” These are the closing words of Norma Desmond, a self-deluded silent film star, in the final scene of Billy Wilder’s 1950 noir film “Sunset Boulevard.”

Frequently regarded as among the greatest American films ever made, “Sunset Boulevard” explores the archetype of the Hollywood star and, more importantly, how fame alters life and the psyche after they exit—willingly or unwillingly—the film industry.

Following decades of unsuccessful attempts to adapt Wilder’s film as a stage musical, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Evita), alongside lyricists Christopher Hampton and Don Black, opened their adaptation in London in 1993. Upon arriving on Broadway the following year, it won Best Musical and Best Actress for Glenn Close at the season’s Tony Awards.

This season, a new revival of “Sunset Boulevard” opens at the St. James Theatre directed by Jamie Lloyd, a director known for “minimalist” productions that eschew the grandiose trappings of traditional Broadway musicals in favor of a more overt visual focus on the characters and dialogue themselves.

Set in 1950, “Sunset Boulevard” is narrated by Joe Gillis (Tom Francis), a struggling Hollywood writer who stumbles upon a dilapidated mansion on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard whilst trying to keep his car from being repossessed. He enters and meets the house’s residents: Norma Desmond (Nicole Scherzinger), a forgotten silent film star, and her mysterious butler, Max (David Thaxton).

Having written a long screenplay, “Salome,” as a vehicle for her return to the film industry, Norma enlists Joe’s help, insisting he live in her mansion as they edit and refine her opus. Joe reluctantly agrees to tackle the awful script, desperate to solve his financial woes.

As work on “Salome” progresses, Norma’s delusional, narcissistic impulses expand beyond rediscovering success in her career to include seducing Joe. Growing impatient, Joe resolves to leave her, knowing her old studio, Paramount, will never put “Salome” into production. Furious, Norma threatens to kill herself and manipulates Joe into staying on as her kept man.

Joe devolves into cynicism as his life with Norma destroys his other friendships and ultimately ends his budding romance with a fellow writer, Betty Schaefer (Grace Hodgett-Young). In a final act of agency, Joe informs Norma he will leave her—and Hollywood—for good. In response, Norma shoots him dead as she descends into madness, mistaking her subsequent arrest for Cecil B. DeMille’s Paramount film set.

The original 1994 production of “Sunset Boulevard” was a highly opulent affair. With a lush, soaring score that recalled the great orchestral sound of classic Hollywood and massive, intricate sets recreating Norma’s Sunset Boulevard mansion and the Paramount studio lot, the production is described as both a beautiful spectacle and an incredible feat of theatrical engineering.

In this new adaptation, director Jamie Lloyd’s approach to “Sunset Boulevard” is a stark departure from this extravagance. Gone are the decadent costumes and scenery, replaced with designer Soutra Gilmour’s set consisting of a large LED video screen at the back of a vast, empty stage. Each character wears black street clothes, and only one costume change occurs throughout the course of the performance.

Designer Jack Knowles takes a cue from the black-and-white films of the era to frame the production’s lighting design almost entirely in variances of black and white, with a few carefully positioned moments of piercing red accents.

This “stripped-down” Sunset makes for a grittier, subdued atmosphere that mirrors the darker, more psychotic elements of Norma’s character. To an extent, Lloyd’s interpretation is more faithful to the style of Wilder’s original film, a psychological thriller and noir that unmistakably creeps towards its impending tragedy like a ticking bomb.

It’s important to note, however, that Lloyd has not chosen to stage Wilder’s original screenplay. On the contrary, he is staging Lloyd Webber, Black, and Hampton’s musical adaptation; a show inherently less dark than its predecessor. This is where the first of several serious flaws in this “Sunset” begins to arise.

To achieve the uniform nature of a bare stage and darkly lit ambiance throughout the entire show (I mean “darkly” both metaphorically and literally here), Lloyd’s creative team has undertaken significant edits and alterations to the original stage adaptation. Numerous lines have been rewritten to use contemporary language or remove references to problematic figures of the silent film era (bewilderingly, however, a line about D.W. Griffith remains), and two musical numbers have been cut entirely.

Perhaps the largest problem with this “Sunset” is a near-complete lack of contextual evidence for who our story’s characters are and what motivates them. Sets, costumes, and props are more than a show’s window dressing; they are the context through which we interpret and discover the nuances of a character and their stories: past, present, and future.

Some shows do not need these elements to properly create their characters; they use dialogue; but “Sunset Boulevard” firmly insists that it will not do so. Norma is an inherently maximalist character, defined by the decaying decadence that surrounds her, and the source material has left the responsibility of that definition largely to the production’s scenic and costume designers.

This lack of context puts pressure on the cast members’ portrayal of each larger-than-life figure. Most of the vocal performances are absolutely stunning; Scherzinger’s “As If We Ever Said Goodbye” is, alone, worth the price of admission (although I didn’t care as much for her rendition of “With One Look”). Francis’ performance of the title song is incredibly exciting, even if the remarkable staging does distract from the number’s brilliant lyrics.

Where the cast struggles is in their dramatic renditions. Without traditional staging, much of the humor in the original dialogue falls flat, and the moody, reserved performances from some actors, most notably Francis’ Joe, are simply uninteresting to watch at multiple points.

The frayed threads connecting this production to its source material make for several moments of confusion for those not well versed in past “Sunset Boulevard.” A lyric referencing the many portraits of Norma on the walls of her mansion is out of place since the dialogue has never previously established that such a wall of photographs exists; a plot point about a dead chimpanzee is perplexing when we haven’t actually seen the small corpse. Is the chimp a metaphor? Is there instead a human dead? Those are questions you’d be forgiven for asking as a newcomer, and they wouldn’t arise when “Sunset’s” dialogue is paired with traditional staging.

The few props and costumes this “Sunset” features are unmistakably modern, and yet the story of “Sunset” is still recognizably written as a period piece. The show’s themes are still relevant in our modern era, but the dramatic vehicle of the musical itself is not timeless. It has a very precise time and place in 1950s Los Angeles that is not easily altered. Tampering with staging and dialogue to create a mix of contemporary and non-contemporary cues for an audience results in an incoherent mess.

Amidst this plethora of complaints about Lloyd’s approach to “Sunset Boulevard,” I will give credit where credit is due: the music soars. Under the musical direction and supervision of Alan Williams, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stunningly gorgeous score is largely unchanged and reverberates throughout the St. James Theatre as the story unfolds. This was clearly a deliberate choice—in a production that strips “Sunset” of most of its “frills,” its most essential beauty has remained.

With full orchestrations and reworked dialogue, Lloyd’s “Sunset Boulevard” has a distinctive philosophy: it relies on auditory information to tell its narrative, while using visual information—sets, lights, costumes, props—to portray themes. This is a brilliant theory of live theatre, and I have little doubt it would be incredible in a show that similarly explores the tragedy of the “Hollywood star.” However, “Sunset Boulevard” is too trapped in the context of the Hollywood Golden Age to work as a non-traditional piece.

In an attempt to free “Sunset” from its traditional staging demands, it has been so abstracted that what remains is a narrative second and a thematic concept first. It has abandoned any pretense of uniting art with entertainment, instead preferring to scream loudly at the audience that it will be consumed as high art and nothing less. This “Sunset” is not meant to be enjoyed; it is meant to be admired and praised for its originality.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this—artistic originality ought to be praised. But in his originality, Lloyd has made a fatal error: as the show drags on, it becomes increasingly clear that Webber, Black, and Hampton’s musical is unable to meet the artistic needs of this unique production. Lloyd knows the potential of his staging, but not the limitations of his story. As a result, this production spends most of its two-hour and thirty-five-minute run time in an active, vicious rebellion against its source material.

It was a creative risk to adapt “Sunset” in this way, and it didn’t work—there’s no shame in that. A healthy artistic discipline ought to push the boundaries of creative expression of a story to the breaking point—that’s how truly great art is made. We take risks and don’t play it safe. But that inevitably means that it doesn’t always work. And this time, it didn’t.

“Sunset Boulevard” is currently running at the St. James Theatre.