From the moment Nicole Sherzinger strides across the stage of the St. James Theatre in Jamie Llloyd’s magnetically cinematic revival of Sunset Boulevard, she seems to own the place as well as the role of Norma Desmond, the silent movie star who’s been consigned to the scrap heap of Hollywood in the late ’40s despite only crossing the threshold of 40. It’s as if she never said hello, or needed to. The delicate and slender former lead vocalist of the ’90s all-female pop ensemble the Pussycat Dolls looks as if she might easily be blown away as she stands barefoot in a black slip of a dress — at least until she plants herself downstage center and launches into one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s signature solos with all the command of an artist who knows how to modulate between barely whispered low notes, an ethereal head voice, and a powerful belt that threatens to turn the St. James into an open-air amphitheater.
Scherzinger is more than ready for her closeup — and her powerhouse vocals are well-matched by her co-stars — particularly the recent Olivier Award winner Tom Francis as the struggling, twentysomething Ohio-born screenwriter who sees Norma initially as an easy means of escape from his creditors and then finds himself unable to escape the intensity of her gaze or the not always implicit strings attached to her generosity. Francis boasts a wide-eyed youthful glow, a gym-buffed frame, and a crystalline baritone that perfectly suits the role. No wonder this hottie proves irresistible to both Norma and a studio script reader, Betty (the silky-voiced Grace Hodgett Young). Her persistent interest in Joe and his writing survives his initial stand-offishness, his subsequent flakiness (exacerbated by his ties to Norma), and her own engagement to another Hollywood striver (Diego Andres Rodriguez).
There’s a bravura showmanship to Lloyd’s radically reimagined revival that’s impossible to deny even when it undermines the emotional undercurrents of the show. The British theatermaker draws from Billy Wilder’s 1950 black-and-white film noir, deploying a giant tilted screen that at many points fills the totality of the stage space and plays live video footage shot on Stedicam cameras operated by members of the company. (Soutra Gilmour designed the minimalist industrial set as well as the monochromatic modern-dress costumes, while Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom are credited with the video design and cinematography.) The effect leads to some stunning tableaux, from projected title sequences after the opening number and the final bows (“a Jamie Lloyd production”), as well as scenes in which characters appear in spotlight against the all-black screen as if they were standing under a street lamp on a darkened city street.
More tellingly, Lloyd’s blend of cinematic and theatrical devices allows for the introduction of closeups of the lead characters’ faces of the kind that theatergoers rarely enjoy, even when they manage to score seats in the front rows of the orchestra section. The screen images generate some unexpected laughs, too, as with the many tight shots of Norma’s hyper-protective manservant Max (David Thaxton, bringing a basso gusto to the role), whose dimly lit tight closeups can mimic horror-film-style jump scares and underscore the creepiness of the living arrangements in Norma’s dusty museum of a mansion. They also capture Scherzinger campily over-emoting like a silent-film veteran, or flailing her arms about mid-song as if signaling a plane into its landing gate.
The coup-de-théâtre opening of the second act begins during the entr’acte — that wonderfully old-fashioned all-orchestral variation on the overture that modern shows seldom deploy anymore — and involves a quick-footed cameraperson following Francis from his backstage dressing room through the cramped backstage hallways of the St. James. He stops by the dressing rooms of his co-stars, which have been seeded with the sort of Easter eggs you might expect of a 21st-century film remake of an old classic. There’s a character in an ape suit (a reference to an artifact on one of Norma Desmond’s shelves), a shelf full of unused turbans in Scherzinger’s room (a nod to Norma’s signature fashion choice in both the film and in the original 1980s stage productions), and even a Pussycat Dolls photo on Thaxton’s mirror. Francis walks by a full-size cut-out of Lloyd Webber before exiting the theater and beginning the Act 2 opener “Sunset Boulevard” while striding by his own poster on a theater door and then continuing across West 44th Street to just outside the Shubert Theatre (where Hell’s Kitchen is playing), and then returning with the ensemble lining up behind him, and reassembling on stage to continue the number about the superficiality of the L.A. film world. (Shayna McPherson is credited as camera operator for the sequence, as well as serving as a member of the singing and dancing ensemble.)
It’s a showstopping, fourth-wall-smashing bit of theater — and one that will have you marveling about the logistical and technological derring-do it takes to pull off the trick eight times a week. It’s also representative of Lloyd’s overall approach to the show, which seems obsessed with re-creating a filmic experience on stage that all too often comes at the expense of the more human elements of the story. Lloyd’s gambits can work spectacularly well — as with the introduction of a younger Norma (Hannah Yun Chamberlain), a Scherzinger lookalike whose lithe dancing and unblemished face offer a stark contrast to the fortysomething star’s, especially in closeup. During the first-act “New Ways to Dream,” when Norma is recalling her glory days as a big-screen ingenue, Lloyd’s ever-present cameras seamlessly fade between the older and younger Norma to underscore the impossibility that she’ll be able to mount her desired big-screen comeback playing a teenage Salomé.
You cannot underestimate the technical accomplishments of Lloyd’s creative team. Lloyd Webber’s score, one of the most sophisticated in his career, sounds great with the 18-piece orchestra under music director Alan Williams’s baton. This is also the first show that I have ever seen where the first spontaneous applause break came not from a vocal achievement or the conclusion of a song but from a lighting cue. It happened some ways into the slow-building first act during “With One Look,” Scherzinger’s opening number as Norma, when lighting designer Jack Knowles deploys haze effects and backlighting to suddenly and dramatically make the other characters instantaneously disappear behind her — a cunning move that reinforces our sense of this faded star’s isolation.
Sadly, Lloyd’s show-me style does come at a cost. For one thing, the injection of all those willful anachronisms, like Scherzinger flipping her hair and walking away from the camera or the many in-jokes in the Act 2 opener, can feel more like sops to a certain kind of uber-fan that will annoy others and stump newbies to the show. Worse, they are distractions that take us out of the milieu of a story set in a very specific time and place in the past.
The bigger shortcoming is that Lloyd’s fixation on his cinematic conceit and overall look repeatedly sacrifices the underlying emotions that have made Sunset Boulevard such an enduring classic. As in past Lloyd projects, like his stripped-down version of A Doll’s House two seasons ago, the actors frequently deliver their lines with a flat, straightforward cadence looking directly at the audience (or, in this production, into the camera). That works fine for scenes built around Hollywood gamesmanship, where a lack of emotion signals the superficial or transactional nature of L.A. relationships. But in other key moments, the approach weakens our sense of the connection between Joe and either Norma or his supposed rival love interest, Betty. In their frequent scenes together, we see no real spark of attraction.
That’s in part because the book, by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, remains a bit of a mess, an awkward distillation of Billy Wilder’s wry social commentary reduced to mere camp. But Lloyd doesn’t help matters by directing his performers to barely look at each other. As a result, Joe and Betty’s romance (not to mention his attachment to Norma) is something that is posited rather than portrayed, with the camera often acting as a third-wheel intermediary. (When Joe and Betty do declare their love, it’s to a camera, with a third lens trained on Betty’s thrown-over fiancé.)
It may help if you know the story beforehand — that was also true of Lloyd’s playful reinterpretations of A Doll’s House and the hip-hop-enhanced Cyrano de Bergerac at BAM in 2022. Going in blind, you are likely to feel less invested in the material, or to appreciate how Lloyd is playing with the narrative beats and introducing new elements. He trusts his audience to fill in a lot of gaps. We never see the vintage Isotta Fraschini roadster that becomes a key element of the plot in Act 2, for instance, and Lloyd has excised “The Lady’s Paying,” an Act 1 number that more clearly established Joe becoming Norma’s kept man even before he’s guilted or seduced into her bed. (Also cut is a forgettable Act 2 solo in which Norma goes to great lengths to restore her youthful appearance in her vain efforts to mount a comeback.)
The overall effect of Lloyd’s Sunset Boulevard is a very Hollywood one — a remake that’s so focused on flashy surfaces and fan service that it loses a bit of its heart and soul along the way. Lloyd produces stage images that are mesmerizing and frankly unforgettable, and the hard-working cast deliver Lloyd Webber’s score with a vocal vengeance. But by the time Scherzinger’s Norma declares herself ready for her closeup in the show’s final moments, you are liable to be more impressed than devastated.
SUNSET BOULEVARD
St. James Theatre, Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes (with 1 intermission)
Tickets on sale through July 6, 2025
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