Sunset Boulevard Revival Broadway Thread- Page 25

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/1/17 at 10:52pm

LesWickedly said: "I'm really considering seeing this, but a part of me is worried that the To Be Announced show for Ahmanson is this one and I really would be disappointed, even if it is worth seeing it more than once, because I could use that show slot to see another. 

 

"if you miss this you will regret it all your life. I regretted missing Glenn in 1994 and I was right, so happy I had a 2nd chance 

 

[chernjam]

Posted: 3/2/17 at 12:34am

Bizarre Ticketmaster:  Sunset tmrw night - Row D, aisle seat - $199 Row M - same aisle seat $299

[Valentina3]

Posted: 3/2/17 at 11:57am

muscle - are you being paid by the producers? You're far too heavy handed. It makes me trust your opinions less since your bias is so strong. I love your passion for the show, but don't tell me/other anonymous people they'll "regret something for rest of their life". That's just bizarre and presumptive.

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 3/2/17 at 12:33pm

The announcement for Los Angeles is coming in the next few weeks 

[Lot666]

Posted: 3/2/17 at 1:34pm

chernjam said: "Bizarre Ticketmaster:  Sunset tmrw night - Row D, aisle seat - $199 Row M - same aisle seat $299"

This is REALLY frustrating.

 

[Lot666]

Posted: 3/2/17 at 1:35pm

rosscoe(au) said: "The announcement for Los Angeles is coming in the next few weeks"

What are you referring to?

 

[Luscious]

Posted: 3/2/17 at 6:25pm

Saw the show last night. Sean Thompson was subbing for Michael Xavier as Joe. Having seen the original Broadway production back in '94, what kept running through my mind throughout was... Ms. Close IS big. It's the show that got small. Lol!  Glenn was perfection, but she deserves a better production. Although I knew going in that it was a scaled down production, I've seen concert versions of shows that were more elaborately staged. That said, I very much enjoyed the 40-piece orchestra. And the performances were all uniformly very good to excellent. It was a real star turn. The audience went wild after Ms. Close's two big numbers and during the curtain call! All in all, I'm very glad I saw it. It was a memorable and enjoyable evening of theater. Final Grade: Glenn Close: A+   Overall Production: B-

Updated On: 3/2/17 at 06:25 PM

[Luscious]

Posted: 3/2/17 at 6:25pm

Double Post

Updated On: 3/2/17 at 06:25 PM

[Brave Sir Robin2]

Posted: 3/2/17 at 6:56pm

"The announcement for Los Angeles is coming in the next few weeks "

 

Is this why the Ahmanson has such a large gap in their season at the top of 2018, perhaps?

[LesWickedly]

Posted: 3/2/17 at 7:05pm

Exactly what I was thinking, Robin.

Also, something worth noting is that in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI-hrMVWBf8 posted by the Sunset Boulevard Youtube, the description says Buy tickets for your nearest Sunset Boulevard performance now

Seems interesting that they'd say your nearest, when this is the only production. It could mean absolutely nothing, though. 

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/2/17 at 11:59pm

I wish the producers would pay me...I have paid over 300 dollars seeing this and took about 20 friends to see it...who have paid over 2000 dollars in tickets probably...but at the end...to see all this fantasy come true on a Broadway stage...and the glamour of old Hollywood, with a screen siren like Glenn Close with these melodies by the fantastic Sir Webber...it is a delight...it's given me so much I don't even care about money. And I'm a cheap Jew. Unfortunately I wasted some money lately on some Broadway shows that sucked! But I want to keep it positive...haha.

[chernjam]

Posted: 3/3/17 at 12:39am

Can I ask where people are getting this idea that this production is going to LA?  Is it from the same people who said that the new cast album had already been done?

I could understand it if the goal is to seriously get paramount to consider doing a film - bringing an acclaimed version from London to NY then back to LA would continue to raise the profile on the show.  Just don't know where some of these rumors just randomnly pop up

[Skimbleshanks2]

Posted: 3/3/17 at 10:05am

With the exception of GLENN CLOSE, I hated the first act.... some of the numbers ("LET'S GET LUNCH" and the NEW YEAR'S EVE PARTY) were torturous to sit through... I wanted to leave...

But the second act... My God...What a triumph...it saved the show...

GLENN CLOSE gave one of the great theater performances I've ever seen... If she were up for the TONY for the first time.... Wow... what a race it would have been between her and BETTE MIDLER...

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 3/3/17 at 10:19am

Good lord, there won't be any film. 

Poor Glenn Close, so happy, lost in her silver heaven. 

Updated On: 3/3/17 at 10:19 AM

[10086sunset]

Posted: 3/3/17 at 10:33am

Anyone else find Fred Jonahson too young for the role of Max?

I've seen it twice so far and it really hit me the second time around. 

In the original, George Hearn could be believed to be a contemporary of Cecil B. DeMille. This time, I'm not sure you can say the same. 

[chernjam]

Posted: 3/3/17 at 11:25am

10086sunset said: "Anyone else find Fred Jonahson too young for the role of Max?

I've seen it twice so far and it really hit me the second time around. 

In the original, George Hearn could be believed to be a contemporary of Cecil B. DeMille. This time, I'm not sure you can say the same. "

 

He definitely is a bit young for the role... But the shaved head helps - and his voice is so amazing, that I forgave that pretty quickly. 

 

[chernjam]

Posted: 3/3/17 at 10:19pm

does anyone know if Michael Xavier is back from his illness?  

[willep]

Posted: 3/3/17 at 10:46pm

I'm pretty sure he was only out for the two shows on Wednesday.

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/3/17 at 11:09pm

Michael is back I hear

[A Director]

Posted: 3/4/17 at 12:41am

When Sunset Blvd. opened in July 1993, the reviews were mixed.  Here's the Variety review.

Review: ‘Sunset Boulevard’

Matt Wolf

JULY 13, 1993 | 12:00AM PT

"When I speak it's with my soul," sings the faded yet defiant silent film star Norma Desmond (Patti LuPone) early in "Sunset Boulevard," Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical of Billy Wilder's 1950 movie. Not for the first time one is left wondering if the same will ever be true of Lloyd Webber when he composes.

“When I speak it’s with my soul,” sings the faded yet defiant silent film star Norma Desmond (Patti LuPone) early in “Sunset Boulevard,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical of Billy Wilder’s 1950 movie. Not for the first time one is left wondering if the same will ever be true of Lloyd Webber when he composes.

Almost obsessively faithful to its legendary source, this “Sunset” has a lot going for it — preeminently a star performance and a production design of equal virtuosity — without that crucial element, a soul, to justify the musical on its own theatrical terms.

“I can play any role,” Norma goes on to sing to Joe Gillis (Kevin Anderson), the newly arrived scriptwriter in her midst, just as Lloyd Webber can no doubt compose in any style. But where are the ferocity, the irony, the sardonic comedy that made Wilder’s acrid film noir a classic? In the musical, it’s not the pictures that have “got small” but the singular vision of a master director, Wilder, whose genius has been diluted into something much more generic.

That’s not to say “Sunset” cannot be adapted for the stage: One imagines what Kurt Weill or Stephen Sondheim would have made of such a dark and desperate story. But as re-conceived by Lloyd Webber with book and lyrics by the first-time creative team of Don Black and Christopher Hampton, this “Sunset” works overtime to pay homage to the film — the story is virtually identical, as is much of the dialogue — without finding its own voice.

Those expecting a new reach from Lloyd Webber may be surprised by a score that repeatedly takes the soft option, not least when it’s rehashing shopworn anti-Hollywood bile (the title song, stirringly sung by Anderson’s Joe) or extolling Norma’s star quality.

LuPone’s dark, yearning eyes and extravagant gestures have made that fact apparent long before the dully overexplicit paean to her, “The Greatest Star of All,” sung by the butler Max (Daniel Benzali, inheriting Erich von Stroheim’s bald pate and ramrod posture without any of his wit).

Most depressing is a thoroughly ersatz love duet for Joe and devoted scriptreader Betty (Meredith Braun in the Nancy Olson part), whose title –“Too Much in Love to Care”– even sounds like imitation Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Elsewhere, the songs busily reprise one another or, on occasion, earlier Lloyd Webber shows (not to mention Paganini, Puccini and the usual crew), which makes sense if one recalls that “Evita,””Phantom of the Opera” and “Aspects of Love” also focus on show business heroines. (Buffs will even spot a reference to the failed verse play “La Bete,” which he produced.) Perhaps the most musically intriguing number, “Surrender,” is Norma’s first: a lament for her dead chimp later reprised by Cecil B. DeMille (Michael Bauer) as a lament for a dying star.

While the setting of the Paramount lot in particular seems to pastiche Robin Wagner’s work on “City of Angels,” designer John Napier has boldly imagined Norma’s 10086 Sunset Boulevard as the kind of rococo mansion M.C. Escher might have drawn up for the Ottoman empire: winding staircases, columns, rich fabrics and the inevitable organ. Act two starts with a poolside tableau worthy of David Hockney, shimmeringly lit by Andrew Bridge, amid which Norma emerges in the kitschiest of Anthony Powell’s entertaining costumes.

The musical’s other talking point will doubtless be LuPone’s Norma, which manages rightly to honor, and then put aside, memories of Gloria Swanson. There’s always been an element of outsized theatricality to LuPone, who perhaps for that reason seems more quintessentially a person of the theater than most current Broadway stars.

Norma is an apt fit for the performer, who meets the challenge thrillingly: She gives us the screen goddess as grotesque, at once seductive and suicidal, and her final descent down the staircase (and into madness) chills the audience in a way Lloyd Webber’s closing crescendo can only approximate.

The only other role of note is Joe, whom Anderson plays as a rather too affable extension of that other callow Joe, Rodgers and Hart’s “Pal Joey,” a part he has done on stage in Chicago. There’s nothing faintly period about this actor, whose body language couldn’t be more ’90s, but he will surely convince more when he tries to ingratiate less.

As drilled by an underused Bob Avian, the 23-strong chorus exists mainly to fill out scenes at Schwab’s and at Par, and to sing two parallel (and forgettable) numbers about dressing Joe properly and giving Norma a massage.

That massage, though, pales next to the one Lloyd Webber gives the audience, allowing a ready cry on matters that in the film are too macabre for tears. In context, what hope had director Trevor Nunn of excavating the buried emotions? In “Sunset Boulevard,” nothing is buried except the bile that made the film great to begin with. It’s as if in trying to humanize Wilder, Lloyd Webber could only sentimentalize him.

[chernjam]

Posted: 3/4/17 at 1:13am

A Director said: "When Sunset Blvd. opened in July 1993, the reviews were mixed.  Here's the Variety review.
"

What a difference 24 years, a different actress, director, production (and critic) make:

Glenn Close makes a triumphant return to the star role of Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard,” a once-in-a-lifetime role that won her a Tony Award in 1995. Ever an elegant actress, she’s positively regal in the English National Opera production which won her kudos on the West End last year and will play a limited 16-week run at the Palace Theater — a fitting setting for this star.

Some roles you really have to grow into, and Close claims diva status this time around. For one thing, she’s spectacular to look at, as put together by her personal design team of Anthony Powell (costumes), Andrew Simonin (wigs), and Charlotte Hayward (makeup). Those glittering gowns that Norma Desmond wears in the lonely grandeur of her Hollywood mansion may be decades old, but these vintage beauties sparkle and flash as if yesterday were only a day away.

And “yesterday” is precisely where the faded movie star seems to live, re-watching her old silent films and re-living her moments of glory as the great Paramount star she once was. The voluminous fan mail that keeps Norma occupied by day is a fiction kept alive by her faithful servant, Max von Mayerling, played by Fred Johanson with a depth of devotion that is genuinely moving — if deeply creepy.

 

RELATED



Broadway Review: Glenn Close in ‘Sunset Boulevard’

 

Max also keeps alive Norma’s life-sustaining belief that Cecil B. DeMille (Paul Schoeffler, fully in character) will one day summon her back to the studio to star in another movie. To inspire the great director, Norma has been working on a monumental script for a silent film about Salome, which she envisions as the role of her lifetime.

Lloyd Webber’s luscious music (burdened by clunky lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton) is performed by a huge on-stage orchestra that lives by its strings. Romantically melodic, the songs eloquently articulate all the facets of Norma’s psyche, from the pride and glory of her past (“The Greatest Star of All&rdquo to the gothic tragedy of her present. Close is divine in these early glimpses of Norma, obviously batty, but clinging to her dreams (and her sanity), and sustained by Max’s ministrations.

The diva’s cozy — if crazy — world spins out of orbit when Joe Gillis (a pallid Michael Xavier), a would-be screenwriter down on his luck), lands on her doorstep. He’s both dazzled and appalled by Norma, who flutters and preens for him and tutors him in the bygone beauty of her silent world in pictures. “I am big,” she informs her skeptical visitor. “It’s the pictures that got small.” And in “With One Look” illustrates the power of the silent film star. “I can say anything I want with my eyes,” she tells him, and in Close’s imperial performance, she does make us believe her.

Learning that Joe is a writer, Norma hires him to finish her script. But she soon turns him into her boy toy, a cushy role Joe can’t seem to resist (“The Lady’s Paying&rdquo. He does manage to escape from the mansion on New Year’s Eve (“I Had to Get Out&rdquo, to party with his peers and snuggle with Betty Schaeffer (Siobhan Dillon, another snoozer), a girl he met at Schwab’s Drugstore. The feeble choreography makes the happy holiday look like a wake.

The weird stuff comes at the end of the first act, when Joe gives up whatever’s left of his manly honor and becomes Norma’s male concubine — to use a term that wouldn’t be out of place in Norma’s epic drama, “Salome.” But Norma’s (and Close’s) greatest moment comes in the second act, when she has Max drive her to the Paramount backlot, believing that DeMille has called her there to studio to deliver her script.

Sweeping onto the film set with the air of a goddess, Norma is at last in her dreamworld, where Close delivers a genuine show-stopper in “As If We Never Said Goodbye.” There’s more to come, and Close relishes every bit of Norma’s descent into madness. But if you want to see grown men weeping in the aisles, this is your moment.

 

[Jane2]

Posted: 3/5/17 at 8:29pm

Just saw the show and absolutely loved it. For me, this is a winner, and so is Glenn Close. And I didn't even have good seats!

First, the set. Having that huge orchestra on stage was no problem at all. It worked beautifully with the set, which is enchanted. The show is enchanted. Close is enchanting.

Don't even start me on the costumes. Spectacular isn't even close (pun intended).

What they did with the lighting gave me chills a couple times during the show but I won't post a spoiler.

I loved the songs and I usually do not love most of the songs in a show. I may even download it!

My only problem and it really isn't a problem, but when Close sang With One Look, I couldn't help but miss Betty Buckley's rendition which brought tears to my eyes, which happens most of the time when she sings.

I don't know how most of the audiences are receiving this show, but tonight's just ate it up. Glenn took several bows, as the audience wouldn't let her leave the stage. When she did, she had to come back three times!

I would see this again. Such a charming show.

[chernjam]

Posted: 3/5/17 at 8:40pm

Glad you enjoyed it Jane so much... were you there today (Sunday) or last night?

 

Returning for my second visit hopefully this week...

[Jane2]

Posted: 3/5/17 at 9:53pm

I was there today, 3 pm show, in mid-mezzanine, row H. Not bad, but I usually like better seats.

Updated On: 3/5/17 at 09:53 PM

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 3/5/17 at 10:35pm

Jane2 said: "I was there today, 3 pm show, in mid-mezzanine, row H. Not bad, but I usually like better seats.

 

"

I recommend you to see it again from the orchestra or very front mezz... I was lucky (and generous) to buy an orchestra ticket on row M and it was much better than the 2 times I saw it at the mezzanine. But if you can only afford the mezzanine, it works too. The music is so beautiful...I'd go even if I had to sit in the last row of the balcony.

Updated On: 3/5/17 at 10:35 PM