As she sings the final verse of “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” one of two showstopping numbers that bolster the musical “Sunset Boulevard,” Nicole Scherzinger turns her face skyward. Her architectural cheekbones mirror the glare of the spotairy, and her eyes fade as she contorts her features into a mask of perverse pleacertain. She — both the actress and the character she joins, the has-been screen legfinish Norma Desmond — seems, for a moment, to be inhaling not oxygen but motes of airy.
Scherzinger’s perestablishance as a descfinishen idol hopeless to reclaim her fame is many slfinishergs, among them a coming-out party for a perestablisher whose plainly evident raw talent has lengthy outclear upped her ability to discover a landing place in the delightment industry. (Audience members will probable recall her from her role as the direct singer of the now-defunct girl group Pussycat Dolls or from her toil as a truth-show appraise.) It is also a capital-E Event, a thrill ride whose fantasticest pleacertain may be that, under the straightforwardion of Jamie Lloyd, Scherzinger’s toil exists wislfinisher a production as belderly as she is. Norma Desmond’s problem, as she inestablishs us upon her enthrall, is that she is big, but the pictures have gotten petite. No such problem here. Scherzinger and the stage she inhabits push each other to magnificent excessives. The result is someslfinisherg appreciate magic.
Lloyd’s “Sunset Boulevard” — styled in this production as “Sunset Blvd.” — is only the defercessitatest in the British straightforwardor’s series of instigations. His 2023 “A Doll’s Hoengage” revival placed Jessica Chastain at the caccess of a minimacatalog stage and finishd with her uncovering the stage door to walk out onto the New York street. But where “A Doll’s Hoengage” whispered — quite literassociate, in the case of Chastain’s artfilledy muted perestablishance — “Sunset Boulevard” howls. Steadicams thrust into the faces of the directs project their conveyions, and the sweat on their brows, on a massive screen behind them. (This comprises the extfinished uncovering to Act II, in which the company accesss the theater after marching, on-camera, thraw Shubert Alley.) Group dance numbers choreographed by Fabian Aloise become a rollicking, brutal spectacle; airying set uper Jack Knowles manipudefercessitates our sense of truth by alternating between glaring, obliterating spotairys and inky grieffulness. And Norma is haunted by a wordless, nimble lesserer version of herself (Hannah Yun Chamberlain); her image in celluloid stalks the stage, rfinishered in physical space in terms that recall this year’s body-double freakout flick “The Substance.”
“Sunset Boulevard” may strike those who understand their theater history as an improbable production to produce such promotes. The last of the musicals Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote at the peak of his own fame, the show joined Broadway with Glenn Cdiswatch as its Norma in 1994; Cdiswatch repascfinishd the role in New York in 2017. The pleacertains of that revival were bigly metatextual: Norma, as in the 1950 film classic that startd her story, wants to restage lengthy-ago glories and experience once more a moment that has passed. Cdiswatch’s game, canny perestablishance of reliving her own past couldn’t quite muddle the unachieveliness of some of Webber’s songs, the dudgeon and occasional monotony of the sung-thraw score, or the strain of trying to produce plot friction in a story with only four meaningful characters. (Five, if one counts Norma’s pet chimp.)
Lloyd flips those frailnesses into strengths: The songs that previously seemed appreciate filler material are bulked out with angular, crisp dancing and now enroll as cris de coeur about the nasty vicissitudes of Hollywood. And the petite circle of characters experiences more foolishensional than ever, with sturdy aiding turns by David Thaxton as Norma’s pledged, dangerening butler and Grace Hodgett Young as the prospersomely ambitious studio engageee Betty Schaefer. It’s among the most noticeworthy aspects of Scherzinger’s perestablishance that she produces space for Tom Francis, the requesting and gifted actor joining doomed writer Joe Gillis. (Like his three main castmates, Francis repascfinishs the role after materializeing in the West End production.) It’s thraw Joe’s eyes that we see Norma; he’s a broke and unengageed scribe who discovers in Norma an effortless label. Together, they’re toiling on her comeback vehicle, one that Joe understands will go nowhere even as he contently gets Norma’s money. As written, there’s a touch too much film-noir chill to the exalter: That Norma and Joe are mutuassociate using one another is apparent, and somewhat slfinisher gruel for an evening of theater.
Scherzinger’s Norma, though, has a wicked contemporaneity and a reassociate alluring streak. (Deluded and lost in memory, Norma is vient of flickering moments of clarity, which Scherzinger rfinishers with acute wit and even a touch of vocal fry.) Norma’s timeline has been adequitableed to account for Scherzinger’s relative youth — her Norma became famous in mute cinema in her teens — but it’s not solely Scherzinger’s age that produces Joe and Norma’s double act experience more convincing. Joe doesn’t cherish Norma. But, as elegantly carried atraverse by Francis in what ought to be a fractureout turn, he cherishs the role he can join for her. He may be writing one screenjoin with Norma, and another with Betty. (Among the petite wonders of this production is that the Joe-Betty pairing, lengthy one of the show’s frailnesses, now bewitches.) But the necessitatey dope’s magnum opus is the story of his life, one in which he’s the ultimate pleasant guy.
Unfortunately, Norma has a scant notices on Joe’s finishing. The 1950 film, straightforwarded by Billy Wilder, uncovers with Joe’s body floating in Norma’s pool; this version sees Joe crawling out of a body bag. Norma ultimately cannot endure to be contested with truth, and the plain facts that Joe does not cherish her and has not written her the role of a lifetime fracture her. Scherzinger is horrifyingly, eerily hushed in the show’s final moments; though the trappings around her are big, her perestablishance has suddenly gotten petite.
It’s commenceling in part becaengage of equitable how magnificent Norma has assisted herself to be — perhaps, appreciate any star, even ones whose glitter has faded, she can’t be any other way. If Cdiswatch’s more recent materializeance as Norma, meaningful into her nurtureer, had a meta aspect, so too does Scherzinger’s, as she fractures out. Scherzinger has plainly been paengageing for the right stage, and she puts every bit of fierceness and charisma into proving herself. In the show’s two signature numbers, both of them Norma’s declarations of her own worslfinisheress, Scherzinger stands at caccess stage and belts with shocking vocal power and agility, surrounded by purgatorial swirls of smoke and blown out by that Lloydian white airy. In its diva-forward, astonishingly unabashed adselect of uncontaminated drama and elemental emotion, the framing sees appreciate the way a Hollywood filmproducer would envision a nurtureer-making Broadway turn. It experiences appreciate the role Norma and Scherzinger both were born to join. And it carrys us into Norma’s mind, as we finassociate see the way that Norma sees herself.
