ARTICLE: Melbourne     Regent left in darkness By GREG BURCHALL, The Age FOR A few days it was one of the best-kept secrets in Melbourne theatre. After Friday night's performance, the cast and crew of Sunset Boulevard were gathered backstage and told the $14 million musical had 12 more weeks to run in the fabulously refurbished Regent Theatre, finishing on 18 July. Really Useful Company general manager Tim McFarlane said yesterday ticket sales had gone ``soft'' in the last couple of months and that the company always expected to consider the show's future after its first six months. ``These things are always under ongoing review and are an accepted part of the business,'' he said. ``Ultimately every show has to finish - naturally, you'd like things to run longer than shorter, but you have to be realistic.'' McFarlane said he didn't feel ``relief'' that all the speculation about how much longer the show would run was over. ``Speculation and rumor is also an accepted part of the theatre business and it doesn't worry me,'' he said. ``I'd be worried if they weren't speculating about us, or if they'd stopped talking about us completely.'' It was always going to be a big ask, filling 1900 seats, eight performances a week for a year, but McFarlane is pleased with the figures. ``It's been seen by 300,000 people and that's a bloody lot of people,'' he said. ``What we've done is given people plenty of notice so they have every chance to come and see the show. People put these things off if they know it's going to run for some time and I'm sure there are still a lot of people who want to see Sunset.'' McFarlane said the show's move to Sydney was ``under consideration - I don't want to speculate about the probability in terms of percentages, but it would certainly be later this year''. Debra Byrne, who plays faded film star Norma Desmond, rejoined the show last Wednesday after a contractually arranged four-week break, but did not appear on Friday night, so missed the announcement. ``(The night off) was by agreement,'' Byrne's manager, Ken Stark, said yesterday. Asked whether Byrne was willing - or would be invited - to stay with the production when it moved to Sydney, Stark said: ``She has no comment to make on that at this point.'' Byrne has also been busy promoting her new album, New Ways to Dream, which features three songs from Sunset. McFarlane said RUC had not started talking to cast or agents about who would or wouldn't be available to transfer to Sydney. ``Obviously we need to give ourselves as much time as possible in case we have to audition and re-cast certain roles,'' he said. Norbert Lamla (faithful retainer Max) and Catherine Porter (peppy ingenue Betty) played their final performances on Saturday night. The Actors Equity deal that brought Lamla from the German production and Porter from the London one insisted they be replaced by locals after six months. ``Norbert and Catherine certainly had an emotional end to their week,'' said McFarlane. ``They were terrific company members who really enjoyed their time here.'' Sydney actor Amanda Harrison began playing Betty on Monday night, while Robert Grubb, who plays studio executive Sheldrake, is in rehearsal to step into Max's shoes and pull on the white gloves from later next week. McFarlane estimates that by the time Sunset finally closes it will have been seen by 400,000 people. He declined to divulge or estimate how that translated to box office takings, but said ``it would have to be one of the highest-grossing shows that has played in Melbourne''. Other industry observers suggest it could be around the $26 million mark (Miss Saigon played in Sydney for 16 months to 770,000 people and made about $46 million). ``As one of the longest-running shows in Melbourne theatre history, and one of the most critically-acclaimed, Sunset is in illustrious company - Phantom of the Opera, My Fair Lady, Beauty and the Beast, Cats,'' he said. ``Sunset has no reason not to be proud.'' The next big show to move into the Regent is the $10 million Show Boat directed by legendary New York producer Hal Prince. Although it had been scheduled to premiere in late 1997 or early 1998, it has now been put back to late March or early April 1998. There were problems wtih Hal Prince's schedule after his production of Whistle Down the Wind shut down after a poor reception in Washington DC. Andrew Paine, the exective director of David Marriner's Princess Theatre Productions that operates the Regent, said it would take a month for the Sunset staging to be removed from the Regent and then it was available for hire. ``The whole point of the restoration was that it was a multi-purpose building that can support a variety of events - one- off concerts, a season of concerts or special screen presentations.'' The same company operates the Forum, Comedy and Princess theatres.