Sunset Boulevard review – Nicole Scherzinger stars in a revival like no other

“That was insane,” said the girl behind me as she left the theatre. Which is just about right. Insane, in an entirely good way.

Jamie Lloyd’s production of the musical version of Sunset Boulevard puts an extra grand into grand guignol. It’s both over the top and perfectly controlled – as hard and rigorous as adamantine, as brilliant as a diamond.

Over the past few years Lloyd has been honing a directorial style that presents drama in black and white, stripped back and intense, revealing the bones beneath the skin. It’s a technique perfectly suited to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black’s musical based on a black and white movie, that tells the story of the silent movie star Norma Desmond, whose career has been ended by the coming of sound.

It also superbly showcases the power of its star, Nicole Scherzinger, who gives a performance of astounding clarity and commitment. When she stands at the very front of the stage, surrounded by misty haze, her hands gently touching her face, her arms weaving fantastical shapes in the air and sings ‘With One Look’ she is in danger of bringing the house down before the plot has even begun to unfold.

Yet that’s the cleverness of Lloyd’s concept. He creates a meta-theatrical world, both cinematic and stagey, where we the audience are “those wonderful people out there in the dark.” As Norma, Scherzinger is performing to us, casting her spell of enchantment.

The boldness of the concept is there from the start when on Soutra Gilmour’s artfully designed empty stage, Tom Francis’s tousled Joe Gillis climbs out of a body bag to begin his narration of his story of a chance encounter that leads him to Desmond’s house on Sunset Boulevard and the fateful affair that ends with his death.

Nothing is naturalistic.  His unhappy encounters in Hollywood, his rejection as writer, are conjured by the supporting characters stepping out of a straight line to deliver their dialogue directly to the front. Fabian Aloise’s choreography adds visceral energy and a feverish excitement to the ever changing-scene.

When he drives to Sunset Boulevard, an on-stage camera delivers Joe’s face in close-up and as the action progresses, that layering of huge cinematic images with an on-stage action that unfolds in stylised, spare groupings increases. Some sections are shot behind the scenes at the Savoy, a Jamie Lloyd Company mug in full view.  The second act opens with a passage of extraordinary bravura skill, as Francis sings the surging title song while moving from backstage to the front of the house, via the street and a few startled passers-by.

Jack Knowles’ sultry, shadowy lighting – which only once uses colour – and the video designs and cinematography of Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom and Adam Fisher’s sound design play their vital parts in creating a dazzling tapestry of action, huge eyes and back lit figures on screen dwarfing the human scale story beneath them. Emotions are big, eyes are wide. There’s an opening credits sequence, introducing the entire show – and when characters leave the action, they simply remove their microphones. Everything is rethought with admirable logic.

Lloyd Webber’s music too, reorchestrated by him and David Cullen and played by an orchestra led by conductor Alan Williams, re-emerges as if freshly written, its soaring melodies held in check with the harshness of Black’s biting words. Shafts of humour appear too.

Not everything benefits from the knowingness of this approach. Both Francis, permanently disgruntled as Joe, and David Thaxton as the loyal retainer Max sing with power, but their characters are writ as large as any silent movie star’s. Sweet-natured Betty, who believes in Joe’s talent, gets rendered too serious for all the vividness of Grace Hodgett Young’s performance.

But its masterstroke is to place Scherzinger front and centre and leave her there as Norma descends into almost gothic madness, her eyes wide, her gestures increasingly frantic. From her first entrance in black slip and over-sized sunglasses, to her final crazed departure ready for her close-up, bathed in blood, she plays Norma not as a pathetic creature or a victim, but as someone who will not surrender, who refuses to give up her dream, whatever the cost. When she stands bathed in warm light and sings of the world of movies that she loves in “As If We Never Said Goodbye”, she brings out all Norma’s passion and beauty.

Her voice is a wonder, both seductive and subtle, but big enough to raise the roof. It’s an extraordinary performance in a beautiful rethinking of one of Lloyd Webber’s greatest shows. A Sunset Boulevard like no other, revealing its dark heart and deep grandeur.