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“Sunset Boulevard” Hits The Road

by Kelly Monaghan

Sometimes it’s better the second time around.

Three years ago, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ponderous “Sunset Boulevard” opened on Broadway with a massive set, massive star power, and massive hype and won a few Tonys. The touring version, with the same massive set but absent a big name Norma Desmond, quickly flopped.

Now director Susan Schulman and set designer Derek McLane have reconceived a scaled down and more accessible road show version of “Sunset” that actually works – at least as much as this lumpish opera can ever work. I caught it in Orlando on its national tour and was impressed.

There’s still Lloyd Webber’s relentlessly banal music, of course, and the lyrics by Christopher Hampton and Don Black sink to the same heights as the score, although in their defense it must be said that the composer offered them precious little in the way of inspiration. On the other hand, there’s that terrific story, courtesy of Billy Wilder’s 1950 movie of the same name, about the faded silent star Norma Desmond, her devoted servant Max, and Joe, the young down-on-his-luck screenwriter who gets sucked into their morbid orbit.

The real news here, however, is the way Schulman and McLane have triumphed over the material. McLane has contributed an eminently workable, imaginative, and, yes, theatrical set that draws us in and encourages us to suspend disbelief, a very necessary prerequisite to enjoying this evening in the theater. Three moving monoliths that evoke prop storage bins serve to create a variety of soundstage settings and Norma’s brooding, decaying mansion is wonderfully and economically evoked with cascading curtains and a moving grand staircase. Best of all, McLane shows what can be done with a virtually bare stage and a dash of imagination. He brings to the second act love scene between Joe and his would-be writing partner Betty Schaefer a lyricism and poignancy that is missing in the music and lyrics.

Of course, Schulman deserves a great deal of credit for orchestrating all this to telling effect. She has also assembled a winning cast and coaxed from them performances that belie that banality of the material.

For those who remember Petula Clark only from her pop-scholock hit “Downtown”, this performance will come as a revelation. This petite powerhouse (the rest of the cast towers over her) brings to Norma both a girlishness and a spine of steel that make the character work wonderfully. She can’t erase the memory of Gloria Swanson in the film, but then who possibly could? Clark has a fine voice that lends Lloyd Webber’s would-be opera music a certain power it hardly musters on its own. The same can be said of the young leads, Lewis Cleale (Joe) and Sarah Uriarte Berry (Betty), who in addition to being fine singers are fine actors who make us care for the cardboard characters with which Black and Hampton have provided them. Unfortunately, Allen Fitzpatrick (Max von Mayerling) doesn’t succeed in rising above the wooden, robotic music with which his character is saddled.

As you may have surmised, I am hardly a Lloyd Webber fan. Obviously a great many people in the theater with me didn’t share my reservations for the material. If you count yourself a Lloyd Webber aficionado, chances are you’ll find searching out this touring production worth the effort.

From Orlando, the show moves to Atlanta, GA; Rochester and Buffalo, NY; Hartford, CT; Charlotte, NC; San Antonio and Dallas, TX; Costa Mesa and San Diego, CA; before wrapping up in Seattle, WA, in mid-August.

For complete information on theaters, dates, and box office phone numbers visit http://dbase.t3media.com/scripts/alw/tours.idc .

Lloyd Webber fans can bask in "Sunset" history at http://www.reallyuseful.com/Sunset/index.html

Kelly Monaghan is the author of Orlando's Other Theme Parks and the forthcoming Universal Studios Escape. He stays on top of the Orlando scene at http://www.intrepidtraveler.com

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