You’ve probably never seen anything quite like the deliriously over-the-top new Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical adaptation of the classic Hollywood film “Sunset Boulevard,” a London transfer with direction by the tattooed hotshot Jamie Lloyd (“A Doll’s House,” “Betrayal”) and a leading performance by Nicole Scherzinger (The Pussycat Dolls) as faded silent screen diva Norma Desmond.
Thirty years ago, “Sunset Boulevard” debuted on Broadway in a traditional, physically lavish production (including a hydraulic mansion) amid much fanfare and gossip, especially due to the scandalous replacement of Patti LuPone with Glenn Close as Norma Desmond. More recently, in 2017, the musical received a concert-style Broadway revival, once again with Close.
Now comes a “Sunset Boulevard” for the new age of experimental reinvention, sensory immersion, contemporary dress, and multimedia enhancement, which follows the acclaimed drag ball rethinking of Lloyd Webber’s “Cats” over the summer.
Scherzinger is joined by other members of the original English cast including Tom Francis (who gives an impressively raw and visceral performance as the struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis), Grace Hodgett Young (tougher than usual as the script reader Betty Schaefer) and David Thaxton (on edge as the butler Max).
The production rides on heavy sensory overload, with intense lighting (which is used to depict location rather than scenery or props), live filming and video projections (with tons of extreme close-ups), smoke and fog effects, monochromatic design, stylized ensemble movement (at one point, the chorus members break into convulsions), and other melodramatic and self-aware gestures. The sound quality of the orchestra is also top-notch, allowing the mostly sung-through score to contribute to the outsized experience.
At the top of act two, as the orchestra plays the entr’acte, Francis is filmed live and projected onscreen as he wanders through backstage dressing rooms and interacts with cast members and what appears to be a cardboard cutout of Webber.
At approximately 9:30 p.m., Francis, accompanied by a security team, ensemble members (including one person dressed as a monkey), and filming equipment, then exits the theater and proceeds to sing the title song while wandering through Shubert Alley and along 44th Street, with bewildered passersby in the background (some of whom have posted clips onto social media). He returns to the theater just in time to finish the song. Like so much else in this production, the sequence is unbelievable, questionable and thrilling.
You are likely to leave the production feeling as ambivalent about the musical (which, despite some high-powered solos, is not the composer’s finest work and is often clunky and meandering) as you do about the production style and performances. On the whole, it makes for exciting, fascinating theater.
Even at its craziest moments, it can be defended and interpreted as the trippy fever dream of its insane heroine and her recently deceased writing partner, who emerges from a body bag to tell his story.
Scherzinger (who is making her Broadway debut) is otherworldly, sexy, kooky, and, by the end, as blood-soaked as Lady Macbeth. With a pop-style voice, she sings the hell out of “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye” while making big “saw the air” gestures with her arms. In a nod to the musical “Follies,” Scherzinger is often joined by another actress who depicts her character’s younger, still famous self.
St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St., sunsetblvdbroadway.com.
