Something I wish I had the chance to do more often as a reporter is to see shows multiple times, deeper into their runs — the “Notre Dame de Paris” musical, which I’ve seen seven times, and “The Phantom of the Opera,” which I’ve seen six times, come to mind.
The first time I saw “Sunset Boulevard” in London last year, I was, to say the least, underwhelmed. Directed by Jamie Lloyd, the British minimalist, the revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical had no sets, all-black costumes and almost no props.
I had seen neither the original 1993 musical, nor the 1950 black-and-white Billy Wilder film on which it is based. This is not an approach I would recommend for a Jamie Lloyd show; the experience was akin to watching a gender-swapped Shakespeare production with no concept of the original.
But one thing did grab me: The outrageously ambitious title number, which is filmed live every night. In a six-minute sequence that begins backstage before spilling out onto the street, the screenwriter Joe Gillis (played by Tom Francis) contemplates the circumstances that led to him becoming the plaything of Norma Desmond (Nicole Scherzinger).
“There’s no way that’s live,” someone sitting next to me said, as the audience watched the street sequence unfold on a towering screen at the front of the stage.
But the actor had grabbed an umbrella as he headed outside — it was raining that night in London, as it often does — which seemed to give it all away.
This, I knew, was a story.
Other shows had extended the stage onto the sidewalk, including Lloyd’s Broadway revival of “A Doll’s House,” in which Jessica Chastain made her final exit through the door of a loading dock at the Hudson Theater, and Ivo van Hove’s Broadway production of “Network,” which had Tatiana Maslany and Tony Goldwyn share a street kiss outside the Belasco.
But now Lloyd was pulling off a full-blown musical number, with more than a dozen performers.
So when the production began performances in New York in September, I was excited to see how the number would be staged for Broadway.
I was less enthused about sitting through the whole two-hour-and-40-minute show again.
Then I watched the Wilder film, and suddenly, it all made sense. The thin plot I had initially thought was a barely disguised vehicle for the songs? There wasn’t much more substance to the original film. The extreme close-ups of actors’ facial expressions, projected on a nearly 25-foot-tall screen onstage? Well, Gloria Swanson’s bulging eyes certainly filled the screen in the film.
My second experience with the show was, to put it mildly, like night and day. Now, I savored the minute details of the acting, blown up to filmic proportions: Scherzinger’s unhinged eyes when she threatens to harm herself. The cold, unblinking gaze of David Thaxton’s Max von Mayerling, Norma’s devoted butler, as he lays out the rules of the house.
And when I returned to watch the three-minute outdoor portion of the title number from outside the theater a few nights later, I could appreciate all the preparation that went into pulling it off.
The barriers placed on the street 15 minutes beforehand to stop traffic. The team of eight security guards, along with front-of-house staff members, who clear a path for the actors. The sure-footed stamina of Shayna McPherson, an ensemble member in London and New York who captures each performance, and who has never missed a show.
When I covered the opening night for the Styles desk a few weeks later, I saw even more.
In the backstage portion of Francis’s walkaround, I noticed the poster for “Salome,” the film Norma is writing in Act 1. And I spotted an image of Scherzinger, in full Pussycat Doll glory, taped to the mirror in Thaxton’s dressing room.
I will see “Sunset Boulevard” at least twice more on Broadway, once to see Mandy Gonzalez play Norma — she’s a favorite of mine, going all the way back to her “Dance of the Vampires” days — and again with a colleague who is a fan.
I look forward to coming into it with fresh eyes again, and to catching the variations in the actors’ expressions, and the potential obstacles Francis and company might encounter out on West 44th Street.
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