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Feb. 22nd, 2025 09:31 amThe other show I recently saw on Broadway was the new revival of Sunset Boulevard, which is just an absolutely fascinating example of what staging and direction can do to a familiar show.
The friend I went with pitched it to me with a link to this review: "have i ever seen sunset boulevard. no. am i FASCINATED by a show that hates its source but is maybe good? yes." Thinking about it, I don't think I'd ever previously seen Sunset Boulevard staged either, but I've heard the music a bunch, which is what listening to Broadway Pandora Radio a lot in the early 2000s gets you, and read a lot about it because that's what reading a lot about the history of noir gets you, so it feels deeply familiar and known to me despite the fact that I have never, technically, been to a production.
So forth we went, and returned afterwards to the question of whether the show does hate its source: no! I don't think it does! Genuinely, I think it loves its source/s, the film and the musical both, and what it's trying to do is aggressively situate itself as a musical in the context of them.
For those to whom it is less familiar, the basic plot of Sunset Boulevard: in 1950s Hollywood, a desperately out-of-work screenwriter extremely behind on his rent accidentally ends up at the house of forgotten silent film star Norma Desmond, who lives in a mausoleum to her own past fame and is convinced that once she finishes the script she's working on, she can launch herself back into stardom. Once he takes a job as her script doctor, he finds himself feeding her professional and romantic obsessions in an increasingly Gothic spiral that inevitably culminates in tragedy.
In the original film, Norma Desmond was played by Gloria Swanson, a famous silent screen siren who was once once such a valuable asset to her studio that she was "carried in a sedan chair from her dressing room to the set", and her Significant Gothic Butler by Erich von Stroheim, a famous silent film director who had not directed a picture since 1933. It is a gothic noir About Movies, About Hollywood Culture, About Fame -- and the Andrew Lloyd Webber Broadway musical is likewise About Movies, About Hollywood, About Fame; what this new production does, I think, is also make it About Theater, about film and theater, about how those are and are not the same thing.
The show's sets are existent, but minimal. The biggest element is a huge projection screen, and the crew -- and sometimes the cast -- have cameras with which they walk onto the stage, getting up close, projecting faces. The cameras are not invisible; the cast know that they're there. Norma is always playing to them. Other characters react to them in variable ways, but they know that they're being watched. The projections are always in black and white, and so is most everything else; it's high-noir, high-chiaroscuro, almost no color on the stage whatsoever, really effectively creepy. If you had asked me before this if an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical could genuinely scare me, I would have confidently said no! I would not have been correct!
The most striking staging choice of the show -- and, I think, the one that most clearly portrays its directorial vision, its argument -- is ( staging spoiler I guess?? cut for length anyway )
Good production! The friend I went with is planning to see it again and I wish I could too. Also I guess now I do have to actually see the movie.
The friend I went with pitched it to me with a link to this review: "have i ever seen sunset boulevard. no. am i FASCINATED by a show that hates its source but is maybe good? yes." Thinking about it, I don't think I'd ever previously seen Sunset Boulevard staged either, but I've heard the music a bunch, which is what listening to Broadway Pandora Radio a lot in the early 2000s gets you, and read a lot about it because that's what reading a lot about the history of noir gets you, so it feels deeply familiar and known to me despite the fact that I have never, technically, been to a production.
So forth we went, and returned afterwards to the question of whether the show does hate its source: no! I don't think it does! Genuinely, I think it loves its source/s, the film and the musical both, and what it's trying to do is aggressively situate itself as a musical in the context of them.
For those to whom it is less familiar, the basic plot of Sunset Boulevard: in 1950s Hollywood, a desperately out-of-work screenwriter extremely behind on his rent accidentally ends up at the house of forgotten silent film star Norma Desmond, who lives in a mausoleum to her own past fame and is convinced that once she finishes the script she's working on, she can launch herself back into stardom. Once he takes a job as her script doctor, he finds himself feeding her professional and romantic obsessions in an increasingly Gothic spiral that inevitably culminates in tragedy.
In the original film, Norma Desmond was played by Gloria Swanson, a famous silent screen siren who was once once such a valuable asset to her studio that she was "carried in a sedan chair from her dressing room to the set", and her Significant Gothic Butler by Erich von Stroheim, a famous silent film director who had not directed a picture since 1933. It is a gothic noir About Movies, About Hollywood Culture, About Fame -- and the Andrew Lloyd Webber Broadway musical is likewise About Movies, About Hollywood, About Fame; what this new production does, I think, is also make it About Theater, about film and theater, about how those are and are not the same thing.
The show's sets are existent, but minimal. The biggest element is a huge projection screen, and the crew -- and sometimes the cast -- have cameras with which they walk onto the stage, getting up close, projecting faces. The cameras are not invisible; the cast know that they're there. Norma is always playing to them. Other characters react to them in variable ways, but they know that they're being watched. The projections are always in black and white, and so is most everything else; it's high-noir, high-chiaroscuro, almost no color on the stage whatsoever, really effectively creepy. If you had asked me before this if an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical could genuinely scare me, I would have confidently said no! I would not have been correct!
The most striking staging choice of the show -- and, I think, the one that most clearly portrays its directorial vision, its argument -- is ( staging spoiler I guess?? cut for length anyway )
Good production! The friend I went with is planning to see it again and I wish I could too. Also I guess now I do have to actually see the movie.
