Sunset Boulevard, The Mayflower, November 7-December 8

FAITH Brown gets ready for her close-up at The Mayflower next week when she takes to the stage as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.

The musical, adapted from the film of the same name, is currently on its first ever tour of the UK.

The show takes musicals to a new level, with lavish sets, sumptuous costumes, fantastic songs, but perhaps the most surprising thing about Sunset Boulevard is Faith Brown in theleading role.

"Faith Brown's performance as Norma is probably a revelation to a lot of people," says the show's executive producer, Kevin Wallace.

"Most people probably have no idea just what a great dramatic actress she is."

"It is incredible to sit in the auditorium and when Faith finishes her first big number and to see the audience just go nuts with applause."

Kevin Wallace knew that Brown was right for the role, made famous by Gloria Swanson, from her first audition.

"Sometimes in auditions, you just know someone's right, you go, `that's the one'.

"It's very, very rare but once Faith delivered the numbers, we said `this is the person we want'."

Sunset Boulevard is set in 1930s Hollywood.

Brown takes centre stage as Norma Desmond, the silent movie star who has been discarded by Tinsel Town since the advent of `talkies'.

When she meets struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis, their volatile and passionate relationship leads to tragic conclusions.

The musical has all the lavishness of the well-known film, recreating this incredibly glamorous era on the stage.

"It's a very expensive production," says Wallace.

"What you've got on the road is actually, by any standards, a mega musical tour.

"It's a very big set, with a big band and a big orchestra.

"But the costumes, the sets and everything else are simply the framework upon which these great performances can hang and this is ultimately why this production is so successful - it's the great performances."

THE BOURNEMOUTH DAILY ECHO
Sunset Reviewed
by Hillary Porter

IT'S the address every theatre lover should check out this month - 10086 Sunset Boulevard.

Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber's powerful musical, at the Mayflower until December 8, is a vivid portrait of crumbling youth and dreams embodied in the tragic figure of fading movie star Norma Desmond.

Faith Brown's portrayal of the used-up and worn-out ageing movie star Norma Desmond is a masterpiece. And with Bournemouth's own bright new star Earl

Carpenter playing the male lead of aspiring movie writer Joe Gillis, this production would be difficult to top.
The sets (around a dozen articulated lorry-loads) magnificently recreate the workshop of Paramount Studios set in contrast to Norma Desmond's home - a shrine to her lost career and dominated by a huge gold staircase down which she repeatedly and symbolically descends, in a different movie star costume at every entrance.

The brooding atmosphere, heavy with loss and loneliness is akin to a mortuary from the moment Jo Gillis stumbles in there to find her mourning her dead chimp.

Faith Brown plays the melodramatic, tortured, love-starved Norma with a spellbinding intensity. The music score is, of course, amazing, too, featuring songs like With One Look, The Perfect Year and Too Much In Love to Care.What started off as a satirical and bleak introspective satire on Hollywood through the Billy Wilder film touches you on so many different levels through Lloyd Webber.

It is a musical to be enjoyed again and again.

LET no-one suppose Faith Brown is 'just' a comedy impressionist. She conveys the full tragedy of personal and professional disillusion that's the core of what is arguably Andrew Lloyd Webber's most potent piece of musical theatre. It's not just that she commands the stage imperiously as faded Hollywood star Norma Desmond in the show based on Billy Wilder's 1950 film. Ms Brown also shifts surely between exquisite, studied elegance - in both movement and singing - and broken-voiced, broken-bodied fragility. Yet although Norma is the heartbeat of the show, the busiest person on stage here - in his home town - is Earl Carpenter as the struggling writer to whom she clings.

The character is less strongly defined but the performer has all the considerable vocal resources needed and employs them intelligently - resorting to vibrato, for example, only occasionally for special effect.

Ceri Ann Gregory and the operatically-trained Michael Bauer complete an impressive quartet of principals.
Sunset Boulevard is satisfying because it sets what is essentially an intimate story in the wider context of a satire on Hollywood. The point is well made by director Robert Carsen, with apt use of cinematic and well as theatrical techniques in a staging dominated by a gilded, curving staircase.

The choreography has true Hollywood pizzazz, and the score is Lloyd Webber's subtlest. Mind you, it packs a punch when necessary in the hands, lungs and hearts of Douglas Whyte's orchestra.