Review: In a Revived ‘Sunset Blvd.’ Norma Desmond Is a Doll – with Pussycat Claws – The Village Voice

One of the most insightful movies ever made about movies, Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) had former silent film star Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a turbaned gargoyle looking back on the old days and becoming increasingly psychotic as she realizes they’re not coming back. Younger man William Holden played struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis, who, against his better judgment, moves in with Norma and ends up her prey — dead in her pool, from where he tells us this tale of Hollywood dreams run amok. (Yes, the film is narrated by a corpse. It’s a macabre meditation on fame, mass fickleness, and dementia.)

In 1994, Broadway got the musical version, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber (Cats, The Phantom of the Opera) and book and lyrics by Don Black (Aspects of Love) and Christopher Hampton (Les Liaisons Dangereuses). Something was lost in the translation from cinema-about-cinema; the songs humanized Norma in a way that fleshed her out but took away from her diva-esque fascination. Glenn Close, though, was superb in the role, able to repel and demand pity in the same phrase, and the show exuded lilting melodies and a mordant appeal.

And now it’s back, in a revised production directed by Jamie Lloyd (Betrayal, A Doll’s House) and abbreviated to Sunset Blvd. Gone are the mansion and other trappings — the set by Soutra Gilmour is just black murkiness and a shimmery curtain. (The sun has already set on this Blvd.) The actors — clad in black, with flashes of white — tend to do representational line readings, looking out at the audience as much as they look at each other. Most importantly, Nicole Scherzinger — who was the lead singer of the strutting neo-burlesque girl group Pussycat Dolls — is Norma Desmond, clad in what looks like a black Victoria’s Secret negligee, making a sexier, less oddball Norma than those of the past.

This production was an award-winning sensation in London, but so was the overwrought current Broadway revival of Cabaret, so I had my doubts. But while Blvd. is a weird mix of the stunning and the dull, there’s enough of the former to give new life to the material, certainly more than Norma’s career ever gets. When she’s not being made to strike cliched arm gestures, Scherzinger is fabulous, full of sarcasm and vinegar. She first appears via a pulsating modern dance routine, moving like an epileptic centipede, then settles into Norma’s alternating narcissism (“We inspired new ways to dream!”) and manipulations (“You can’t possibly think of leaving now, Joe”), eventually growing into a full-scale Hollywood monster.

Scherzinger’s bold performance should make for gleeful gay bar conversation for years to come. When the audience cheers her two big numbers, you can sense the diva hunger she’s fulfilling.

The belty ballad “With One Look” has the big-lunged Scherzinger rhapsodizing about the power of sincere acting — specifically, hers. (“With one smile / I’m the girl next door / Or the love that you’ve hungered for”). She’s even more effective when Norma returns to Paramount Studios — pretty much respected, but unwanted — for a deeply felt “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” her desperation threatening to make her sympathetic. (“I don’t want to be alone / That’s all in the past / The world’s waited long enough / I’ve come home at last.”) Scherzinger lives the song moment-to-moment in thrilling fashion, and it helps that we’ve already been set up to feel softer about this off-putting creature. Asked if they should just shoo the woman away, studio head Cecil B. DeMille (Shavey Brown) soberly remarks, “Thirty million fans have given her the brush. Isn’t that enough?”

Otherwise, the show features a lot of recitative-style singing and very little dialogue — it’s really an opera — and falters when Norma is not center stage, though the supporting players manage to score amidst the smoke effects. David Thaxton is her devoted servant Max von Mayerling (“You are the greatest star of all!”), who’s harboring a secret that ends up sending chills, as in the film. And Tom Francis is expert as Gillis, especially in the entr’acte, which consists of a live video of him, beginning in his dressing room where he happens to be watching the movie version of Sunset Boulevard. Francis then passes by his castmates — including Thaxton, looking at a photo of the Pussycat Dolls — and a cutout of Andrew Lloyd Webber, only to end up on the street, where he keeps singing amidst real-life Times Square activity. The fourth wall breaking (the video design is by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom, with this particular tracking shot done by ensemble member Shayna McPherson) makes clear that this is an evening about theater and putting on a show as much as it is about Norma’s desire to get on camera again — though of course, videos are just another form of moviemaking. Throwing just about anything into the mix — Norma’s beloved dead monkey even ends up alive and part of the street bustle — underlines the fact that director Lloyd will try just about anything for effect.

The show’s palette makes it feel like an old black and white movie — set in no particular time — and the large video closeups of the cast throughout the performance readily transport you to Norma’s image-obsessed mindset (“We had faces then!”). By the end the whole thing has become a horror movie, thanks to a drawn-out end sequence that leaves Norma’s nightie covered in blood and audience members either shaken or relieved. But the truth is, Scherzinger’s bold performance should make for gleeful gay bar conversation for years to come. When the audience cheers her two big numbers, you can sense the diva hunger she’s fulfilling for the Broadway crowd, who are anxious to have this icon back, and in a revelatory way. 

For those who are wondering if Sunset Blvd. has made a comeback, one need only remember Norma’s comment about herself: “I hate that word. It’s a return.” ❖

Sunset Blvd.
St. James Theater
246 West 44th Street

Michael Musto has written for the Voice since 1984, best known for his outspoken column “La Dolce Musto.” He has penned four books and is streaming in docs on Netflix, Hulu, Vice, and Showtime.