What happens when an ex-mega-pop star, two British men with freakishly good American accents and a camera operator walk onto an empty stage? Sunset Blvd. answers this question.
I came into the show knowing nothing about the original 1950 Sunset Boulevard movie, nor the 1994 Broadway show of the same name scored by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Jamie Lloyd’s revival, Sunset Blvd., originally opened on London’s West End in 2023 and moved to Broadway in Oct. 2024 with most of the original cast. While I had done a brief search and knew that the production was avant garde in nature and to some degree nonconformist, I was ready to put in the work otherwise. I entered the theater not ready to sit back and relax, but rather be on my toes and attentive in order to fully understand the story. And on my toes I was.
No amount of research or listening to the soundtrack could’ve prepared me for Nicole Scherzinger. Lloyd wrote this reprised role of Norma Desmond, a no longer relevant silent film star, with Scherzinger in mind. And sure, Scherzinger’s history as once leader of Y2K giant The Pussycat Dolls – though people my age may know her more for being one of the X Factor judges who formed One Direction – could be reminiscent of a less-extreme version of Norma’s past. It is not lost on me or the audience, however, that Scherzinger is too gorgeous to in any way resemble being “washed-up” or “aging.” Yet, perhaps this is the entire point: that Hollywood sets aside any woman who looks even slightly over the age of 35. Whichever way her inclusion can be interpreted, Scherzinger proves she was meant for this role as she breathes new life into Norma with prowess that only comes from years of experience being on stage.
The musical follows struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis (Tom Francis) who serendipitously finds himself in Norma’s mansion where she recruits him to help her work on her self-cast screenplay, “Salome,” while she provides him food and lodging. Norma lives alone with her butler Max (David Thaxton), who we later learn has a more sinister role in contributing to her delusions. “With One Look,” one of the biggest numbers of the show, occurs barely halfway through the first act and this alone is worth going to see the show. Schzerzinger’s command of the stage and the audience is horrifyingly captivating. To say she is a show-stoppingly wonderful singer would be an understatement. By the second act’s “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” she has the audience in the palm of her hand, and there we stay until curtain call.
What I enjoyed most besides the raw talent of the cast was the technical aspects Lloyd injected into the production. There is no set, Scherzinger dons a black slip dress and goes barefoot and, as an ode to silent film, much of the show is projected onto a screen by camera-operators-turned-ensemble-members. The camera becomes its own character, showing closeup shots of all of the main characters at all angles. Camerawork becomes most necessary at the top of Act 2 as the title song “Sunset Boulevard” is not performed on stage. Instead, Francis starts backstage and makes his way through the lobby and onto 44th Street, performing the entire song with the ensemble joining him at the end, when he enters into the theater and walks to the stage through the audience. Naively, though I had seen clips of it from outside, when I first saw the sequence in the theater, it was not until I saw the puddles on the street that I believed that everything was live. This moment was a perfect combination of film and theater, and of blurring the lines between actor and character.
Another fascinating aspect of the show was that, despite the darkness of the story, the campiness of the production lended itself to a number of surprisingly fun moments as Scherzinger plays Norma in a way that is as creepy as it is comedic. At one point, Norma does a dance sequence that incorporates several currently trending dance moves. Then, she throws a New Year’s Eve party that she demands Joe attend, but it turns out the party is just her, Joe and Max clad in silver party hats. The entire backstage sequence of “Sunset Boulevard” is also somewhat unserious, with cast members goofing off in the background and a cardboard cutout of Lloyd Webber. Later, Francis is joined by an ensemble member in a gorilla costume mid-strut on the street.
By the end of the show, the enthralled audience holds their breath when Scherzinger delivers the iconic line, “I’m ready for my closeup,” and the camera zooms toward her face. I personally had chills.
This latest Broadway staging of Sunset Blvd. proves that in theater, not everything need be confined to the limits of the stage. While Francis, Thaxton and the rest of the cast showed great command of their roles, much alike the story itself, Scherzinger is the star with a performance that transcends screen, stage and generations. Sunset Blvd. was unlike anything I’ve seen before in all the best ways. Walking out of the theater, I had exactly two thoughts: One, Nicole is winning the Tony, and two, theater is so back!
Sunset Blvd. plays at the St. James Theatre and closes July 13.
Eirian Huang is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. They can be reached at ehh56@cornell.edu.
