As if we never said goodbye by Michael Walsh of Time
Few Shows have arrived on Broadway hauling as much excess
baggage as "Sunset Boulevard," the Andrew Lloyd Webber megamusical based on the
Billy Wilder film that opened last week. Having already conquered London and Los Angeles,
"Sunset" has generated enormous expectations--reflected in a record advance sale
of $38 million. There's been backstage drama aplenty, as the mercurial composer sacked not
one but two leading ladies, and snubbed New York by opening the $13 million American
production in Los Angeles last year. No doubt, legions of Lloyd Webber haters would love
to see the infuriatingly successful British interloper have another flop like his last
Broadway outing, "Aspects of Love."
Sorry, folks, but the show's a hit, thanks in large part
to Glenn Close. The actress projects authentic glamour as Norma Desmond, the demented
former silent-screen star who wins her final close-up on a police blotter. Close starred
in the L.A. production and won the Broadway part after Lloyd Webber reneged on a contract
with Patti LuPone, the creator of the role in London; it cost him $1 million to buy LuPone
out. Faye Dunaway, meanwhile, was engaged as Close's successor in L.A., only to be fired
when Lloyd Webber decided her voice was not up to the part; her $6 million lawsuit is
pending. Close, her mobile face and twitching hands working overtime, captures all the
character's narcissistic neuroticism that, if unschooled, is nevertheless a welcome relief
from LuPone's raw edge.
The radiant "Sunset" may not be Lloyd Webber's
best score, but it is his most seamlessly and artfully constructed. There is a resemblance
between this show and "The Phantom of the Opera"--reclusive mad protagonist
conceives passion for young member of opposite sex--but that is merely plot. Musically,
"Sunset's" real forebear is "Evita." The angular, chromatic
recitatives for Norma explicitly recall Eva Peron's egocentric ravings. If the music of
the new show lacks "Aspects'" delicious subtleties and "Phantom's"
gothic flamboyance, it still offers two of Lloyd Webber's best songs in "With One
Look" and "As If We Never Said Goodbye."
Director Trevor Nunn and designer John Napier, the
"Cats" team, have fashioned one coup de theatre after another, reprising
Wilder's opening with the newly deceased hero (Alan Campbell as Joe Gillis) facedown in a
swimming pool, and working up to a levitating mansion. This larger-than-larger-than- life
approach doomed the gentle "Aspects," but it suits the more histrionic material
of "Sunset." Some of the lyrics, though, have got to go. To have Joe sing that
L.A. has changed a lot "since those brave gold rush pioneers/ Came in their creaky
covered wagons" is ridiculous. L.A. barely existed in 1849; the gold rush rook place
400 miles to the north; and the prospectors mostly came by sea, it being difficult to get
wagons over the Rockies. Even in Hollywood they can't manage that.
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