Sunset Boulevard – Savoy Theatre 2023/24

excellent front dress circle seats on sale on TKTS for 50£. And congrats for its 2 Evening Standard Theatre Awards nominations!

Also worth checking ATG out the day before as dynamic pricing seems to be working in favour with premium seats dropping to more reasonable amounts.

I have, for Sheridans final Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. I don’t recall the legroom being particularly bad, and the view was good.

Yes, i did on Tuesday. It's fine - it's snug but not unbearable. I'm 6ft with broad shoulders and found it fine.

Another Rave from another American critic - nypost.com/2023/10/19/nicole-scherzinger-stars-in-a-seismic-london-sunset-boulevard/

Just back from tonight's show and totally blown away. I hadn't planned on seeing this with Nicole as I wasn't a fan but after seeing all the reviews I had to check her out and boy am I glad I did. It was incredible. The two big numbers and the final scene are out of this world. I've never heard an audience react as loudly as they did tonight.
Praise too for David Thaxton, loved how he's put a new portrayal to Max.
Orchestra, just perfect, stayed til the end to hear it all it was a shame not many others did.

5 stars from me as well. Loved the staging and outstanding performances from all the cast. Hard to believe its Grace Hodgett Young first professional role- she makes Betty a truly memorable character.

Full standing ovation at yesterday matinee- and mid week matinées don't get standing ovations as much as other performances I have found.

First time at the Savoy theatre through and I can't say I'm a fan of the building through.

it's weird having to stand at the side of the hotel too, you feel everyone look you up and down queueing whilst they swan inside

Have to agree re the theatre. My first time there and didn't really like it. All those stairs are so confusing- but it does make the Act 2 opener very impressive. Tom must be so fit to go up and down them all whilst belting out that tune without loslng breath. And the dress circle was so hot last night!

Nicole is on The One Show on Monday.

When I first read about the casting I assumed she was really young for the role but she’s actually older than the original Norma (Patti LuPone) was when it opened, and only a year younger than Glenn Close was when she did it in LA originally. This assumes all the ages on Google are correct, of course.

In this production she’s obviously styled much less as an aging Hollywood grande dame, and there’s a change in a reference near the end from her being 50 to being 40 (she and the others mentioned all actually played the role bang in the middle of their 40s) but to be honest it works because her Norma feels significantly older than Joe and yet not so old that the age gap makes the end of Act 1 much of a leap of imagination. It’s more Max being younger than her which didn’t quite stack up for me.

In terms of the greatest star being very young, I think you have to look at what (at least I think) Jamie Lloyd is trying to get at, namely the way we continue to build up celebrities, idolise them, give them god complexes, then move on without a second thought - so she might have been a huge star at 18 and by 45 she’s a real “whatever happened to her?” character.

If you see the show I'm sure you'll see what I'm getting at but to me it's sort of like modern dress Shakespeare productions where you as the audience have to slightly bridge the gap between the fact that what's being said and what's being presented doesn't entirely match up in a literal "we're in year x" sense, but the parallel is clear enough. So you sort of don’t have to literally buy Nicole Scherzinger as a 1920s film star, just as someone whose celebrity rose and fell in dramatic fashion.