Hm. Well.
I saw this yesterday evening and came out with conflicting thoughts. There's some wonderful dance, the performances are uniformly breathtaking, the audio might be the best I've ever heard in a large West End theatre... but ultimately, I came away feeling that I'd just watched two hours of a square peg attempting to force itself into a round hole.
I'm no purist, and I'm no hater of minimalism. But fundamentally, the issue here is that the material doesn't lend itself to minimalist staging. It's too broad; too reliant on props and costumes and environments and the moment-to-moment minutia of character interactions. In comparison to prior productions, a whole lotta stuff has been lost but very little has been gained.
"Here's that 'Bases Loaded' material," Betty says in her first scene - but she's carrying nothing, so the thread of the conversation is lost. "I'll see you again when I surrender," Norma weeps - but the moment is confusing because we don't know who or what she's singing about until Joe delivers some new dialogue about looking into an adjacent room and seeing a dead chimp. "Looks like six very important pictures," Joe quips - but the joke fails to land because there's no stack of papers for either him or Norma to gesture towards. "Did you see how they all came crowding around?" Norma says to DeMille - but she's been totally alone for the entire Paramount scene. "Thanks for the use of the trinkets," Joe mocks - but no trinkets have been established. "Mad about the boy," Norma screams in her final scene - but since the cigarette case and all references to it have been cut, that phrase means literally nothing.
But whatever. If you want to stage a version of Sunset Boulevard that forces the audience to dynamically figure out what's happening, then fine. I may not like it, but if push comes to shove, I'm able to imagine chimps and scripts and crowds and trinkets.
What I can't imagine though are the actors' performances. The direction here is inexplicable - unmotivated, unengaging, boring. Almost every scene in the first fifteen minutes is staged in the exact same way: the characters stand center stage, face the audience, and recite their lines with neither emotion nor intonation nor facial expressions. I could maybe see this working if Joe were a morbidly depressed character for whom every conversation was a vapid slog, but that's not who he is.
Let's Have Lunch is supposed to be a chaotic, eclectic number; Joe bounces from networking with casual acquaintances to eagerly greeting old friends to pleading with his agent to humorously misleading hitmen. These interactions are completely different in tone - so why stage them all in the same soulless, sterile way?
If I weren't already a fan of the material, I think this sequence would've severely impacted my enjoyment of the rest of the show. God knows how the audience is supposed to follow along when the guy blaring "WE WANT THE KEYS TO YOUR CAR!" appears to be completely ignoring Joe, staring off in the opposite direction with a blank expression.
On the other hand, when we get to the house, the acting swings to the other extreme. I'm sure this is intentional - Norma riding high on the drug of her past while Hollywood keeps cynically churning out commercial content - but the sudden tonal shift threw me off. The
Salome sequence is less "I've Written a Letter to Daddy" and more "Evil Peter Parker", with Nicole twerking and rolling all over the stage and pulling ridiculous faces at the camera. It's one thing to present her talent as decaying; it's another to make me wonder how she ever became a star in the first place.
Speaking of which, I guess I should comment on the screen. In principle, the idea of a screen as the centerpiece for a Sunset Boulevard production is obviously great (the final moments are crying out for a giant image of Norma's face to be projected onto the wall behind her). And it's been done to great effect before: think of the new Oklahoma's
Pore Jud is Daid sequence. The screen allowed the audience to see every bead of sweat on Jud's face, every flinch of self-loathing, and how it contrasted with Curly's scathing impassivity. The subtlety of the characters' emotions was important to the scene, ergo the camera magnified them.
But in this production... well, since every non-Norma actor appears to have been given the direction to remain as apathetic and emotionless as possible, the camera more often than not reveals nothing. Joe and Betty's conversations are mostly shown in close-up, but their chemistry remains non-existent. Even toward the end of
By This Time Next Year, a moment that's unambiguously supposed to be hopeful for the two of them, their expressions look like those of prisoners of war. Why?
The attempts at cinematography are laughable. When Joe and Betty chat in
By This Time Next Year, Artie is framed between the two of them. Wow. So bold, so clever. Then - get this - in the reprise of
Boy Meets Girl, Norma is framed between the two of them. Wow. They said it couldn't be done once, so it was done twice! Then - get this - in the middle of the same goddamn scene - brace yourself - Artie walks in between the two of them, maneuvering his way around Norma (who's still standing there). Wow. I mean, wow! How does Jamie Lloyd come up with this stuff, huh?
The other directorial "flourishes" are similarly lazy and repetitive. Whenever anyone brings up Norma's past, a younger version of her comes on stage to meander about for a few moments. When Norma asks whether Joe has a girlfriend, the actress for Betty does the same thing. It's not evocative, it's intrusive - like an anime flashing back to five minutes ago because it doesn't trust viewers' memories to stretch back that far. We know Joe is thinking about Betty, we don't need to freaking see her on stage!
The common denominator here is tonal dissonance for tonal dissonance's sake. Instead of allowing a scene's emotions to naturally flow as written, every beat needs extra postmodern "commentary". It's not enough for the dishonesty of DeMille's assurances to Norma to be implied; we have to see a giant DeMille projected onto the screen, drenched in shadow like some Star Wars villain. It's not enough for the wrongness of Joe and Betty's kiss to be implied; we have to see a giant Artie projected onto the screen with a single soap opera tear flowing down his cheek (funniest sh*t I've seen in weeks). I was told Jamie Lloyd is a "daring" theatre director; is this seriously the extent of his imagination?
There are some bright spots. The first car chase is an effective visual, and I loved the use of opening credits. Max's lines are often presented via creepily intimate camera close-ups, which I think works for the character. Norma's two big solos are excellent (although the deserted stage for
Never Said Goodbye is tremendously boring in comparison to the "freezeframe" from prior productions).
And yes, the title song is astounding. To all the doubters, I think I can confirm the recording is live; rain was just beginning to fall in the interval, and sure enough, as Joe left the theatre he grabbed an umbrella and performed in the rain. And unlike the rest of the show, the "artistic point" being made is kinda subtle and intriguing, drawing a parallel between Joe's success in Hollywood and a modern actor's success in London. But this theme is left unsupported. As people have already remarked on this thread, the rest of the show has not been modernized in any significant way.
Act 2 proceeds in much the same way as act 1, with the same repetitive, subtle-as-a-sledgehammer gimmicks. The final scene change puts Betty on the screen, pulling some "screamy" faces that I guess are supposed to represent her inner emotional state or something. Meanwhile, Norma and Joe and Max sprint back and forth across the stage like they're playing tag. When the music reaches its climax ("Sunset Boulevard! Da-da-da-dada...") the rest of the cast run on and stand totally still as the lighting goes red. Rarely have I seen such gorgeous music accompanied by such a wet fart of a visual sequence.
In summary, no, I don't think this production comes anywhere close to working. I'll give it a 5/10 for the material, performances, audio and dance, but in terms of direction I found very little to appreciate - and indeed, a lot to dislike.
