Eamon Lujan, Guest Writer
I want to preface this review by saying I did not hate this production, and I fear everything I say next is going to make you think I hate it. I don’t hate it; I desperately need to see this weird show again to better understand it. It is a unique piece of theatre, unlike anything I have ever seen in my life and that’s perhaps why I sound so negative, because I don’t have a good frame of reference for understanding a production like this. If you can, I encourage you all to go see Sunset Boulevard.
The show I saw was during the week Nicole Scherzinger, the lead actress, was out, and Mandy Gonzales played the titular character, Norma Desmond instead. She is currently billed as a guest star in the show, performing every Tuesday night and any other time Nicole is out. At the performance I attended, all roles played by Emma Lloyd were played by Abby Matsusaka instead. I sat in the front right mezzanine, Row A.
Sunset Boulevard is a revival of the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adapting the even more classic 1950s movie of the same name. This production is directed by Jamie Lloyd, who has been making quite a name for himself lately. Andrew and Jamie have become particularly good business partners, perhaps an intense psychic connection due to the shared name. Jamie is also slated to direct an upcoming revival of Evita on the West End this summer, as well as directing Andrew’s new musical The Illusionist.
This production of Sunset Boulevard originally premiered on the West End at the Savoy Theatre for a limited run. It has since transferred to Broadway with the same, original cast from its debut. The musical features Andrew Lloyd Webber’s orchestrations and a book and lyrics by Christopher Hampton. In my opinion, a revival should be trying to introduce some new element, and should give us a reason to put this show on stage again. Sunset Boulevard absolutely fulfills that requirement, being a new reimagining of the musical, and one of the boldest steps forward in theatre at large.
The musical follows the same plot as the movie. Joe Gillis, a down on his luck screenwriter, ends up at the residence of Norma Desmond after a police chase. Norma Desmond is a former silent movie star who now lives alone in a luxurious mansion with her butler, Max Von Mayerling. She believes she is still the greatest star who has ever lived and employs Gillis to edit an incoherent and self-serving script she has dedicated her life to writing. She intends this to be her return to the screen, to the millions of fans who have always been waiting for her to return. Slowly, she pulls Gillis further and further under her control, before he meets a grisly end at her hands. (Side note: I don’t quite consider this a spoiler because both the movie and musical open on him being dead and narrating the story. In the musical he pops out of a body bag, and in the movie he all but says “I bet you’re wondering how I got here” as he floats in a pool).
Previous productions have had very lavish sets, using Norma’s mansion as an excuse to go in a very maximalist direction. Jamie Lloyd has done the opposite, making this a very minimalistic version. There is absolutely nothing onstage except fog and lights. All characters wear plain black and white clothes. The star of the show is a 23-foot-tall LCD screen that lowers from the ceiling and shows the audience a live feed from cameras onstage. Suddenly, the actors’ faces are blown up for us to see with incredible detail. Everything on the screen is still filmed in black and white, keeping with the style of the movie and the aesthetic presented on stage. Credit for the Silver Screen, and the accompanying video design and cinematography goes to Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom, who I applaud for bringing something so complex and bold to the stage.
The cameras are centered inside large apparatuses the actors and camera crew use to hold them steady. Think large square steering wheels, with the camera being situated where the horn would be. Joe Gillis, played by Tom Francis, actually does hold it like a steering wheel when he starts his car chase with the cops. After twenty minutes of jazzy music and fun choreography, the screen is lowered for the first time. Actors moving behind Francis give the impression of movement, as wind is blown into his face. Suddenly, a title card drops: “Sunset Boulevard, directed by Jamie Lloyd”, followed by a full opening credits sequence. It is a production concerned with movies, quite literally trying to put a movie onstage in a way I’ve never seen before.
Gillis then slinks into Norma’s mansion, and she makes her slow entrance as the orchestra plays her gorgeous, soaring theme. Norma Desmond is normally played by Nicole Scherzinger, most known for her work with the band The Pussycat Dolls. I have seen people herald her performance as a once-in-a-lifetime role, something that is simply unmissable. Nonetheless, I missed her as we went the week she was scheduled to be out. Mandy Gonzales acts as her standby, and they were smart to market her week as a “big event”, a reason for people to come back to see the show. I have a hard time imagining how Nicole would have been much better than Mandy, the minimalism of this show gives them very little to work with. Despite that, Mandy has managed to construct a grand character. I fear this is where much of my confusion with the show began.
Norma has always seemed old and senile, but Mandy plays her with something of a youthful energy. She stares into the camera and makes dramatic faces, akin to what people would do in a TikTok sketch. I think she is trying to be one of the “fellow kids”, acting like she is still a 20 something star, even though that is no longer the case. She is acting like she’s still in a silent movie and looks insane doing so while every other character gives carefully crafted film performances when in front of the camera. I believe it is true that good art often needs to be digested, something you discuss on the way home from the theatre. However, I also don’t want to pay money to be confused in a theatre. This production walks a fine line between art and confusion, and I fear at times it leans a little too far into confusion.
After Mandy sings “With One Look”, I suddenly felt trapped in a worse version of “Think of Me” from The Phantom of the Opera for forty-five odd minutes. Leitmotifs continue to be replayed so often it feels repetitive rather than artistic. Characters walk around the stage slowly and talk in a strange, dream-like manner. How many times can a woman possibly sing about giving the world “new ways to dream”? I was downright sleepy in the first act, I wished we could go back to the upbeat jazzy sounds of Hollywood the show started with. The end of act 1 picks up a little, but I had not been convinced what I was watching was actually “good” yet.
Act 2 contains all the real drama, even if the story feels truncated. It begins with an incredible sequence where Tom Francis sings the title song while he walks down seven flights of stairs and out onto the streets of New York, before he returns to the stage to finish the song. We only see him on the screen as the camera operator Shayna McPhearson follows him, often having to walk backwards. It is full of fourth-wall breaks and references to the movie itself and actors’ lives.
David Thaxton admires a picture of Mandy Gonzales in his dressing room, we see Norma point to the gun she’ll use later, and Francis sings the words “Sunset Boulevard” while standing under the marquee of Sunset Boulevard. The plot picks up pace significantly, as Gillis navigates a burgeoning relationship with fellow writer Betty Schafer, and begins to understand how dangerous it is to be in Norma’s grasp. His demise is perhaps one of the most visceral depictions of violence I’ve seen (or rather, heard) onstage. He is shot, and the stage goes dark as we hear his cries of pain and agony as Norma begins to tear into him.
When the lights come back on, Norma has blood running down her mouth and soaking her black slip. She is alone onstage, and it is dead silent as an unseen camera zooms in on her face as she utters her famous line: “I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. Demille”. After the curtain call, the screen begins to play a closing credits sequence, and I was struck with the fascinating feeling that I was walking out of a movie theatre.
Quite frankly, if I had not watched the original movie before I saw this show, I don’t think I would have been able to follow anything that was happening. The minimalist set is interesting but robs us of context. Norma’s mansion is of the same magnitude as Schwab's Drug Store and Paramount Studios, all of which are presented as just an empty stage. A lot of the plot feels gutted, there isn’t a creeping sense of dread as Norma’s fingers tighten further around Gillis’ autonomy. There is a love side plot between Joe Gillis and Betty Schafer that is given adequate space to breathe in the movie, but is left compressed in this stage adaptation. When Norma begins to break from reality, the ensemble comes out dressed in her black slip and starts convulsing on the ground as the screen flashes red. I dare say this production is incomprehensible without knowing the movie first. The spectacle is grand, but the plot has suffered as a result.
Tom Francis’ performance as Joe Gillis is fine, and I wish Grace Hodgett Young had enough real time onstage as Betty Schafer for me to say much about her performance. Jamie Lloyd seems to have directed her and many others to walk slowly across the stage and speak like they’re in a dream, which is a shame. Young was recently seen in the West End transfer of Hadestown, where she played Eurydice. She’s very engaging on the cast album they recently released, and I wish I got to see her in a better role.
David Thaxton plays Max Von Mayerling and I feel as though he may have had the best performance in the show. His voice is deep and booming, he is always shown on the screen so his intimidating face looms over Gillis. When he walks and speaks slowly, it feels calculated rather than strange. However, I’m excited to see what he does next!
Sunset Boulevard is currently selling tickets up to July 6th, but I doubt it is going to close anytime soon. With the production easily grossing a million dollars a week, operating costs are being covered fully right now. The show will almost certainly not tour. The set is simple, but the logistics needed to do the walk at the top of act 2 in different cities is downright impossible. They could tour without it, but I fear the show would be much, much worse off without a crucial selling point.
The show is facing stiff competition to win Best Revival at the 2025 Tony Awards. They will have to battle the already successful revival of Gypsy starring Audra McDonald (across the street at the Majestic Theatre), a revival of The Last Five Years starring Nick Jonas, The Lincoln Center’s greatly anticipated revival of Floyd Collins, and Pirates! The Penzance Musical, a reimagining and renaming of the original. Nicole likely puts on a nomination worthy performance, but she’ll be fighting Audra McDonald and Idina Menzel and we still have ten musicals coming out before the Tony eligibility period ends in April. We will see in June whether the Tony voters think Sunset Boulevard is high art or a confusing reinterpretation of a classic, but the production already seems to know the answer.