Sunset Boulevard – Savoy Theatre 2023/24

In my experience it's been finishing around 22:07-17 if you stay for the playout, second act is just shy of an hour if you slip out during bows

I went in previews at the end of September, and loved it, and having followed this thread avidly since then I literally cannot wait to go back on closing night in the new year!

I guess the combination of Sunset and Nicole (despite some of our initial reservations on here) was enough to make me book twice quite early on. I'm front row on the 6th thanks to the keyworker offer so I reckon it'll be a pretty special night.  Should also be really interesting to try and spot what's changed along the way.

I've only had to dash out of a show once to catch a train and i felt bad not being able to give a proper ovation (not criticising anyone that does it was just how i felt)

Finally caught this from my early booked, restricted view seats up in the gods (thank god I booked early as others have said!)

I have very mixed feelings about it. Sounds amazing, looks incredible - the use of the big screen with live pictures shot with a filming shallow depth of field is stunning, and many moments work well. I’m lucky though as I’ve seen the show and the movie countless times before. If I wasn’t familiar with the source material I’d have been hopelessly lost - especially in the second act when it became too gimmicky and meta for my liking; I totally bought into the timeless world they created in Act I - even the placing of Norma as some Kardashian has been - but strange, slightly tacky choices like tongue in cheek cardboard cutouts of Andrew Lloyd Webber and the use of a modern laptop in Act II pulled me out of it and made the material feel unimportant with gimmicks and style taking precedent at the expense of any sense or reason.

Overall, in my opinion, it’s enjoyable and impressive as a visual and experimental piece but it fails in simple storytelling, and unfortunately that’s a rather important aspect to be overlooking.

Crikey, I've just looked at ATG, and bar a single seat in the stalls on Boxing Day, the entire rest of the run is sold out!  Given how it was selling when it first opened that's pretty impressive.

I feel EXACTLY the same. I saw the matinee on Thursday and I can't stop thinking about it. I knew absolutely nothing going in which I think made a lot of difference, but what an absolute masterpiece of theatre. Proper, genius level stuff. Sailed straight in to my top 3 of the year, no question. I loved the meta, self-referential stuff, but I also loved Nicole Scherzinger being Norma at 45. Arguably (from what I've read), Norma is usually portrayed as older - but I loved the idea of that radical swing of celebrity that seems to speed up all the time, and I thought Tom Francis was utterly superb as Joe.

Absolutely loved it; can't get it out of my head.

Amazing again tonight. Show stop after ‘With One Look’ (presumably for NS to continue trying on the dresses from Shein that she’d ordered but wasn’t sold on yet). From the front row it felt a lot more aggressive & confrontational than the front of the dress. NS (over)acts the sh!t out of this and was terrifying from ‘Who’s Betty Shaeffer’ onwards. This format certainly wouldn’t work for everything but totally does for this show. Not a lot else to say. Tom Francis is a star and deserves to be the breakout from this.

It started at 7:40 when I went. One guy in my row left near the end of the first act and wasn't allowed back and then a woman behind me left about 10 mins in to the second act (and obviously wasn't allowed back in), so they definitely seem pretty strict about not allowing people back in once they leave.

This is utter nonsense. Get a life.

In one of the earlier performances, a lady left near the interval and was able to get back into the auditorium but not much further than the dress circle doors, just behind where the wheelchair bay is. She had to stand for the remainder of the act which, fortunately for her, was only a few minutes. It was fortunate for me too as she was right in my eyeline - one of those elusive marked down £20 dress circle seats!

They certainly seem to be much stricter now so I doubt she'd even have got back through the doors if the same happened today. I was at today's matinee (for my umpteenth visit!) and they're now sending emails beforehand which make it very clear that latecomers won't be admitted and that there is no readmission, so it's not as if people can claim they're unaware.

Incidentally, this afternoon's audience felt a bit less engaged and certainly more disruptive than it has in previous visits. Perhaps to be expected for a pre-Christmas matinee(!) but the cast themselves were still in sensational form. Scherzinger sounds almost operatic at times.

Same happened last week during that song! But I saw the person taken poorly - took forever for the show to stop though.