by Donald Lyons of The Wall Street Journal

The city of Los Angeles seems to have been experiencing a collective nervous breakdown (instances obvious). Yet at the same time, it is the setting, almost the theme, of much vital popular art. Two of [1994]'s more stylish films, "Pulp Fiction" and "Ed Wood," are about today's and yesterday's city. And the decade's only two good original musicals take place in that semi-mythical decade, the 1940s: "City of Angels" from 1990 and "Sunset Boulevard," which just opened at the Minskoff Theatre. "City of Angels was about a writer falling afoul of Hollywood politics; "Sunset Boulevard" is about a writer falling afoul of Hollywood mythology. Thus, neither is about a real L.A. even to the extent that, say, "West Side Story" dealt with a real New York.

"Sunset Boulevard," like "Gypsy" before it, is about the glories and despairs of show business, or, if you will, art. Andrew Lloyd Webber has found in the 1950 Billy Wilder movie and ideal outlet for his sensibility. Sometimes in the past, his panting romanticism has looked inappropriate (amid, for instance, the jumbled politics of "Evita") or fatuous (amid the tangled amours of "Aspects of Love"). The romantic yearnings seemed glib and willed until "Sunset Boulevard," which is certainly his masterpiece.

I was not convinced it was a good idea to make a musical of such a savage film, a film so saturated in cynicism and irony, so black-and-white, so dependent on its perfect performances from Gloria Swanson, William Holden and Erich von Stronheim. And the film remains even a greater achievement. But the composer Mr. Webber has found a home for his larger-than-life operatic romanticism in the story of the mad recluse and the guilty gigolo. For once his sweetness, ever ready to curdle, is exactly right. And there is wit and brio, too, in the book and lyrics by three-time Webber collaborator Don Black and Christopher Hampton, a prolific dramatist best known as the stage adapter of "Dangerous Liaisons."

"Sunset Boulevard" the musical frankly acknowledges itself as derived from a movie; it wears (more easily than does "Showboat") movie conventions: An early scene takes place among the technicians and extras ("they're temple virgins") on the set of Cecil B. DeMille's "Sunset Boulevard"; in what looks like but isn't actual footage from the film, screenwriter Joe Gillis's car races down Sunset to escape the repo man. When Joe turns by accident into the driveway of silent star Norma Desmond, the musical abandons naturalism for dream. In the movie, where Norma lived was a conceivable, if eccentric, residence; here, she dwells in a replica of the lobby of the old Roxy theater-complete with organ. It's a valid metaphor for the mad religion of movies, with its temple goddesses.

Glenn Close as Norma floats about this temple like a vampire bat-whitened face, black-and-gold robes, clinging talons-underlining every inflection and gesture. She gives Norma youth and energy and a sarcastic near-awareness of her own hermetic lunacy, which Swanson by contrast seemed totally caught up in. Ms. Close's temptation-one she largely avoids-is to make her portrayal a campy commentary on Norma. Two threads the musical develops far beyond the movie: Norma's identification with man-slaying Salome, the heroine of the comeback script she's written for herself, and the filming of "Samson and Delilah."

The seamless flow of scene into scene is another way this musical imitates the cinema. Most spectacularly, Norma's mansion rises into the air as Joe escapes the claustrophobia of her New Year's Eve party to join his raucous young friends at a party below it. While the kids caper, Ms. Close gives new meaning to the word upstage by attempting suicide on her balcony. When Joe rushes home, the mansion settles back down and the two consummate their dangerous liaison.

In general, the first act counterpoints the young folks' workaday world (the set, the party, Schwab's Drugstore) with Norma's dream world. It has, too, a lively, old-fashioned number called "The Lady's Paying" when tailors arrive to outfit a squirming Joe with a cutaway; the great musical moment occurs as Norma and Joe watch her old silent film "The Ordeal of Joan of Arc" (a clever addition, this) and she hymns the power of movies as the inventor of "New Ways to Dream."

The second act opens at Norma's pool, with Joe ensconced in full gigolohood but uttering a cry of anguish about the unrealities of his situation in the song "Sunset Boulevard." This gives Alan Campbell, who's been fine, a chance to add tragic weight to his Joe; he takes it. Beauticians getting Norma ready for her imagined comeback provide a feminine equivalent of the tailors' chorale in "Eternal Youth is Worth a Little Suffering"--who ever said a Webber score wasn't hummable? This one is.

Then comes a weak stretch as the young lovers-Joe and fellow screenwriter Betty (Alice Ripley)-and butler/ex-husband/ex-director Max (George Hearn) get obligatory but ho-hum songs. To be fair, young love was perfunctory in the film, too, but von Stroheim's Max was not, and is missed here. As the grim and shockingly staged climax speeds toward us, "New Ways to Dream" and "Sunset Boulevard" are variously reprised (along with the less interesting "Greatest Star of All").