By Vincent Canby of the New York Times

NEW YORK - She's eccentric, but what great star of silent films wouldn't be after years of public indifference? Certainly her Hollywood-bizarre, fur-trimmed wardrobe indicates that she's no slave to commonplace haute couture.

She's the kind of woman who might wear pantaloons or a lampshade with the confidence of someone who sets the fashions that others follow. That needn't be crazy, just self-assurance to an extreme degree.

Don't worry that her fondness for wigs and turbans suggests that she has a problem with thinning hair. Like everyone else, when she gazes into the mirror, she sees only the image she holds in her mind. That image is easier to see when supplemented by a wig or a turban.

Her imperious manners can't be ignored, but she's no more neurotic than a spoiled child. The truth is that she's really a victim. She's not mad; she's a vulnerable if overprivileged waif.

This is the new, revisionist Norma Desmond played by Betty Buckley, who, after successfully heading the London company of "Sunset Boulevard" for a year, has replaced Glenn Close in the New York production at the Minskoff Theater.

The differences between the two actresses' performances are so pronounced that you might suspect Norma had put in time at some 1949 equivalent of the Betty Ford Center. She hasn't become the girl next door.

Yet she possesses a certain sane coherence that has the effect of importantly altering Andrew Lloyd Webber's caustic, grandly overstated, melodramatic musical hit. Ms. Buckley's Norma is almost normal.

Although Trevor Nunn's original staging is unchanged, "Sunset Boulevard" has become a better-integrated show. It doesn't have the highs of the original New York production, when Norma Desmond's ferocious tenacity could be simultaneously spellbinding and funny in the manner of high camp, as well as so abject as to be emotionally devastating.

At the same time, there are fewer lows in the production when Norma leaves the stage and attention is turned to the subplot: the doomed love affair of Norma's gigolo, Joe Gillis (Alan Campbell), a failed screenwriter, and Betty Schaefer (Alice Ripley), a pretty, well-scrubbed secretary.

Their sequences are no more affecting than they ever were, but because the new Norma is no longer the magnificent gorgon she once was, her presence isn't acutely missed.

This "Sunset Boulevard" moves more smoothly, but at the cost of theatrical excitement.

Ms. Buckley is a handsome actress. Encased in Anthony Powell's succession of fantastic, museum-quality costumes, she often looks very much like her predecessor.

She's also a savvy musical performer, having enchanted New York audiences in everything from "Cats," for which she won a Tony as Grizabella, to less successful shows like "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" and "Carrie."

I remember her most vividly as the belting, no-nonsense country-western star in the Bruce Beresford film "Tender Mercies."

London so adored her in "Sunset Boulevard" that she was nominated for an Olivier Award, something denied Patti LuPone, whom she replaced. Among other things, Ms. Buckley has a fine big voice that can be suddenly, transformingly sweet.

Yet today's elaborate sound amplification systems are merciless equalizers, pumping up some voices and toning down others to such an extent that vocal talent alone amounts to little on the stage anymore.

Given the right sort of electronic support, Minnie Mouse might be able to sing a reasonable Norma Desmond. Whether she could act it is something else.

The total performance is what counts, and Ms. Buckley's, though still the focal point of "Sunset Boulevard," is no longer the show's domineering, hypnotic center. Both the fury and the wit are now so understated that the lyrics, though clearly heard, seem more sentimental than they actually are.

When Ms. Buckley sings "With One Look," the show's anthem to the art of silent film acting, her Norma clearly believes everything she's saying.

What we are not getting (as we did in Ms. Close's performance) is the additional awareness of the grotesque difference between the lethally fixated, middle-aged woman who is singing and the iconography of innocence being evoked.

The bi-focal concept of the character is no longer evident in a performance that appears to seek sympathy for Norma. This is a fatally mistaken notion. "Sunset Boulevard" is not "Hamlet."

Lloyd Webber, the composer, and Don Black and Christopher Hampton, who wrote the book and lyrics, went about as far as they could in turning the Wilder film into a Grand Guignol operetta. Norma Desmond is not a character of infinite variety, capable of being interpreted in an infinite number of ways.

Ms. Buckley's Norma is comparatively polite. She's not a great, awesome witch, as she should be in everything she does, whether it's the imperial way she carries her clothes, orders Champagne or demands sex ("Now let's go upstairs").

When she grovels at Joe's feet as he threatens to leave her, she's panic-stricken, but she should also be sly. She's always acting. She's a figure of pathos not because she's a victim or a waif but because she has allowed herself to be so monumentally, horrendously deluded.

Without Ms. Close's bravura, larger-than-life stage presence, "Sunset Boulevard" seems smaller, more orderly, more kitschy. The show's big set-pieces no longer have any real dramatic payoff, as when, near the end of the first act, Norma briefly enchants Joe at their New Year's Eve ball for two ("The Perfect Year").

Ms. Close clearly responded to Campbell, who originated the role of Joe with her in Los Angeles. Their boozy laughter was exhilarating and heartbreaking. As yet, no such rapport is apparent between Ms. Buckley and Campbell.

Gone, too, is the double-decker effect of Norma's return to the Paramount lot in Act II, when she's moved to sing "As if We Never Said Goodbye." As Ms. Close imagined her return to the screen, it was both a threat and a promise, terrifically moving but also, in a ghastly way, funny.

Ms. Buckley sings the number beautifully, but when the madness behind it is somehow negated, its dramatic importance is diminished.

Ms. Buckley has quite bravely chosen her own way of playing Norma, but she ignores the old rule, as true in the theater as it is in dealing with the unwell in real-life: the psychotics always win. They aren't fun to live with, but they put on a hell of a show.