Sunset Blvd.

We are ready for our close ups

In high school, I copied the two-disc Sunset Blvd. original broadway cast recording to cassette so I could listen to it on my Walkman while I mowed the lawn. I was thrilled to later discover the original London recording so I could compare and contrast the performances of Patti Lupone and Glenn Close, noting the changes to the score when the show moved across the pond. It was also the first show I ever saw on a Broadway stage. Betty Buckley was Norma at the Minskoff in 1997. I remember my outfit, where we sat, and thinking that the full-price $63.50 ticket was exorbitant.

And that was only the beginning.  I saw a weak community theater production twenty years go, the 2017 revival, and the 2023 Kennedy Center Production. I’ve read about the show online and in books,  and Broadway Bob’s Sunset Project is by far my favorite podcast. He seems to be the only person I’ve encountered who is a bigger Sunset fan than I am.

 I thought my super fandom would enhance my experience of the new revival,  but it turned out to be a limitation. Purists hated Daniel Fish’s 2019 updated Oklahoma. I loved it.  I expected to be instantly enchanted by this Sunset in the same vain. After the first viewing, I can only say that I liked it a lot. I challenge myself to see the show with eyes as fresh as director Jamie Lloyd’s. I’m not quite there yet , but I’m not a crotchety purist either.

This Sunset replaced the original flying mansion that awed me at sixteen with larger than life video closeups. In doing so, the melodrama is effectively upgraded to pathos. Like reading a book, the stark staging and minimal black and white costumes create a blank page that requires the audience to use their imagination. Unlike the severed head of Salome’s lover, the plot is not delivered on a silver tray. You have to listen and imagine. It can be a heavy lift for the uninitiated, but at the end of the day all art lives inside our minds.

I want to have that internal aesthetic experience, but then my analytical brain takes over. There’s no props, so that means no cigarette case. This gift from Norma tips off Betty that Joe is in another relationship (if you can call it that), but with no cigarette case, I guess we assume she just is blindsided in the final moments? Every changed lyric and new orchestration that did not match my 1997 bootleg cassette set off a mental siren that pulled me out of the moment. I know that’s a me problem.

While the room for audience interpretation is akin to reading a book, it’s also clear that you are watching a movie. This Norma can say anything she wants with her eyes, especially when they are in close up on a screen that fills the stage from floor to imagined ceiling. In Ivan van Hove’s Westside story, the use of video was a superfluous party trick. Here, it heightens emotion by creating beautiful symbolic visuals. Norma’s face blends seamlessly with her younger self as she reminisces about her new ways to dream.  Artie sheds a larger than life tear on screen as we watch Joe and Betty fall in love below. Cecile B. Demile has the voice of god and is seen only as a twenty-foot tall silhouette. These moments are like peering into the character’s minds and souls in ways that books and movies allow for more readily than does the stage.

However, the videography  does feel like a party trick when Joe opens act II in his dressing room. The line between actor actor and character is intentionally blurred in a way that I didn’t like. Self-referential visual gags (i.e. a pussy cat dolls poster, a guy in a chimp suit, a cardboard cut out of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber) create a laugh at a moment in the story that is anything but funny.  If I try to think like  I imagine Jamie Lloyd did, it makes sense to see the actor become the character at the same moment we are silencing our cellphones and ending chit chat to become an audience again. Nonetheless, it felt a little disrespectful of the material to me.

But I must admit that it was very cool to see Joe walking out of the theater, around 44th street and Shubert Alley,  before emerging inside at the back of the house by the end of the song. Not all party ticks are bad I guess.

Nicole Scherzinger’s  Norma is sexy, hilarious, physical, and modern. It’s easy to believe that Joe would fall for her. She brings a vitality to the role that I’ve never seen before. She sings from the bare soles of her feet straight to the rafters when she needs to and she whimpers almost inaudibly when she needs to.  At times she is pounding her chest, rolling on the floor, acting like a valley girl, and it all somehow really works. She’s also often stoically observing the action like a statue center stage.  She intimidates most when she does nothing at all. Her pathos in the final moments of the show is far more realistic and frightening than in previous productions. We get the one and only splash of color in the show as we are deep inside her mind, far from any aspect of her physical life. No fright wig or haunted house costume needed. 

I need to see this show again. The novelty of the first viewing was overshadowed by the images and sounds that have been living in my mind for twenty-seven years. In a career defining role, Nicole Scherzinger deserves all of the accolades that she will continue to receive. Upon repeat viewing, I can hopefully quiet my critic and return to beginner’s mind, letting my sixteen year old  self speak. I eagerly anticipate the new cast recording coming out at the end of the month so I have new Sunset content to obsess over. No bootleg cassette necessary this time.