Posted: 4/2/15 at 8:05am
I found the performance all the more memorable for that restraint, the wry, distancing demeanor is crucial to keep sentimentality at bay. MILD SPOILER When she embraces her youthful self late in the show, Rivera's eyes well up and she briefly shows us what all of these machinations cost her. I think it's a brilliant stroke because it in no way undermines the original intentions, just shows a human glimmer of feeling, the pain underneath. And frankly, if there isn't acute pain under the revenge, even if buried until she arrives, why are we there? That's an obvious problem with the play as musical fodder. If you simply stick to the cold assault on the town and the man who jilted this woman, what sort of one-note trajectory is worth our time? (Someone at the other board found Rivera one note; the very moment I just referenced disproves that for me.)
Some people had this problem, to a degree, with SUNSET BLVD, i.e. that Wilder created a self-absorbed, narcissstic Norma who wouldn't wear her heart on her sleeve in extended song. The very (warm-voiced) arias that define the musical version were considered by some to be contrary to the character's chilly ego. (One reason Close's Norma was in many ways closest to the film's, Buckley's victimized Norma the farthest. I thought Elaine Paige came closest.) I don't have the problem. Musicals often allow people to express emotion otherwise left to the unconscious. To a certain extent, both Norma and Claire, musicalized, must go (unbidden) to places the original authors kept withheld. Both shows slow down for an examination of emotional states, whereas in the original iteration the moments are brief(er) and don't interrupt the often very unemotional action being played. It's the nature of the musical theater, and certainly owes its debt to opera.
Updated On: 4/2/15 at 08:05 AM
