We have come to expect the unexpected from Jamie Lloyd. The director’s 2019 revival of Evita gave Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical a hipster-ish edginess, and it is the same for this production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical, to which he brings ferocious unpredictability.
Based on Billy Wilder’s film about struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis and his relationship of convenience with faded Hollywood starlet Norma Desmond, it speaks to that original medium. A black and white film is being made on stage and projected on to a gigantic back-screen. Credits roll at the beginning and end. Cameras follow characters, capturing their faces in magnified proportions so it’s clear that all here are ever-ready for their closeups, not just Norma.
Don Black and Christopher Hampton’s book retains some of the best lines of the screenplay, and while the score sounds bombastic at times and many of the songs seem unmemorable, the singing dazzles across the board. Nicole Scherzinger as Norma is not only a formidable vocalist but, as a celebrity playing a woman who is wrestling with the loss of her own celebrity, it is inspired casting for its circularity. The show has a stupendous sense of reinvention, with an end scene so arresting that it surprises even those who know what’s coming. So why, with all these riches, does it leave this critic so removed and restless?
Perhaps because the glut of concepts are not unified. It begins as a noir, all blackness and smoke on Soutra Gilmour’s empty set, while the second half takes on horror movie overtones with manic lighting (by Jack Knowles) and frantic choreography (by Fabian Aloise). Meta elements take us backstage, as Joe is filmed walking past a photo of Scherzinger in her Pussycat Dolls days, into her dressing-room and to the front of the theatre itself. This all draws circles within circles, is playful in its humour, but sits oddly against the production’s otherwise brooding tone. An exploration of celebrity culture is found in meta glances at Scherzinger’s fame, but these also cause a clash between the has-been character portrayed on stage and the superstar status of the actor playing her.
Meanwhile, characters are inscrutable and we cannot access their emotions. Lloyd employs the same overt non-naturalism as in his revival of The Seagull, so actors often speak directly to us with understated expressions. Where the technique hypnotised us then, it feels distancing now. Joe (Tom Francis) seems like a cypher, deadpan for too long. In the film he is repelled by Norma’s advances but here he responds to her New Year’s Eve kiss with gusto. It is an interesting twist but not built upon. Is he in love with Norma as well as aspiring screenwriter Betty (Grace Hodgett Young)?
Scherzinger neither channels Gloria Swanson’s queenliness nor Glenn Close’s imperious yet humane Norma from 2016. Instead she is hammy, monstrous and antic in her narcissism, preening at the camera, flashing Instagram pouts and explicitly performing vulnerability. Even though she comes so far downstage that we feel physical intimacy, she is flatly drawn and devoid of any humanity – a horror film succubus or murderous gorgon who would literally kill for another 15 minutes of fame.
There is great vocal power to the songs, including the titular number, Sunset Boulevard, by Joe, as well as New Ways to Dream and As If We Never Said Goodbye by Norma. The pace is slowed down for the songs and verges on inert, while the radicalism of Lloyd’s staging butts up against Lloyd Webber’s far less radical score.
Even so, it is sure to incite strong reactions. For some, it may be the show of the year. For me it was emotionally empty. Either way, few people will walk out indifferent.
• At Savoy theatre, London, until 6 January
