Bwaygurl2 said: "poisonivy2 said: "
I feel like it worked bc one thing that's never made sense about the musical is how damned earnest all the ALW power ballads seem as a response to a movie that is deliberately cruel and ironic. Billy Wilder made you care about Norma by highlighting all the ways she's ridiculous. It's pathetic and sad. ALW power ballads are more "yasss queen" than pathetic and sad.
But by making it all so artifcial, and making Norma SO theatrical and performative, it kind of brought back the coldness that was so much a part of the original film.
My thoughts exactly. Webber isn't suited to cynicism and irony, and that was lost in translation from the original movie to the musical. He is superb at conjuring Old World glamour and mystery, the Hollywood Babylon of it all, and Norma and Max are in his wheelhouse, Joe less so. This production reinstates the irony and is truer to the original movie in tone."
These two comments, by poisonivy2 and Bwaygurl2, offer the best defense of the revival that I have run across. I didn’t enjoy the production as much as many of you did, in part because I thought Jamie Lloyd’s direction alternated between silly and self-indulgent. But maybe all the artificiality, which I found distancing except for Max, was the point.
Nicole Scherzinger’s performance as Norma, despite its periodic winks to the camera, is deliberately overwrought. That’s what Lloyd is asking for, and it may fit the source material better. Even the slowed down versions of Norma’s big ballads evoke grandeur while taking advantage of Scherzinger’s powerful voice. That is Lloyd’s vision of the show, and perhaps I was too annoyed by his ‘look-at-me’ flourishes to give proper credit.
Plus, the revival does a fantastic job of making Lloyd Webber’s score work. It sounds great, overwhelming but clear. The show keeps the Old World glamour and mystery that Bwaygurl2 describes but casts it in a harsher and more pathetic light.
Updated On: 5/11/25 at 01:27 AM
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