With a Remarkably Intense Performance, Nicole Scherzinger Brings to Life the Fictional Star at the Center of ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ Norma Desmond

If Norma Desmond were a real person, and were she still with us, she’d be jumping for joy right about now. That’s because the fictional Hollywood has-been at the center of “Sunset Boulevard” — first introduced by a garishly made-up, 50-ish Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilder’s satirical film noir — is now being played on Broadway by Nicole Scherzinger, the drop-dead-gorgeous singer and actress who rose to fame as a member of a girl group, The Pussycat Dolls.The production that brings Ms. Scherzinger’s Norma to New York is a revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical adaptation of “Sunset Boulevard” (with a book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton) that has already earned wild acclaim during a London run. It’s helmed by a British director, Jamie Lloyd, whose rigorously, at times ostentatiously stripped-down takes on classic plays like “A Doll’s House” and “Betrayal” have earned attention on our shores. Mr. Lloyd approaches Mr. Lloyd Webber’s canon just as you might expect he would, embracing the composer’s penchant for bombast while keeping the physical setting relatively sparse. Although the action ostensibly still unfolds in 1950, the year of the movie’s release, Soutra Gilmour’s bare-bones set offers no indication of a specific time or place; nor do her predominantly black-and-white costumes, which if anything suggest casual contemporary wear.Yet other visual elements, such as Jack Knowles’s lighting and Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom’s video design and cinematography, are decidedly less understated. Mr. Lloyd and his team never let us forget we are seeing a show that was based on a movie, and is about making movies; cameras follow the principal actors as they preen and flirt and sweat and cry, often blurring the line between camp and melodrama.Tom Francis and Nicole Scherzinger in ‘Sunset Boulevard.’ Marc BrennerThis approach is particularly merciless as it’s applied to Ms. Scherzinger, whose Norma must always be ready for her closeup. The character is about a decade younger in this staging; it’s suggested toward the end that she’s 40. The actress is 46, and her exquisitely featured face and svelte, toned body — draped in a sleeveless, slip-like black dress — would make many women half her age jealous.Yet she is trailed in numerous scenes by another comely performer, Hannah Yun Chamberlain, cast as the younger Norma. At one point, both women’s faces alternately loom in tight shots that accentuate Ms. Scherzinger’s tiny wrinkles. It could be that Mr. Lloyd is emphasizing our enduring obsession with youth, or even proposing that it has been exacerbated in the digital age, but the implication that a beautiful, vital woman in her 40s could be seen as a washed-up crone is jarring.Overall, Ms. Scherzinger doesn’t suffer for the scrutiny. Her performance is one of remarkable, and at times ludicrous, intensity. This Norma is forever mugging for the camera, scrunching up her face or tossing her hair; I found her antics — surely encouraged, or at least approved, by Mr. Lloyd — a little excessive, though many in the audience ate them up during the preview I attended.When she sings, the star is mesmerizing, bringing a throbbing beauty to the music and a dual sense of determination and desperation that rings true despite her sometimes overzealous gestures. She has a worthy leading man in the handsome, dynamic Tom Francis, who as Joe Gillis, the ambitious younger screenwriter who gets pulled into Norma’s web, reveals how his character uses jadedness as a defense mechanism.Mr. Francis has several compelling scenes with Grace Hodgett Young, the sweet-voiced actress cast as Betty Schaefer, the plucky ingénue who appeals to Joe’s better angels. When the cameras loom in on the would-be couple, their interaction is adorable and touching; like the other players — among them David Thaxton, comically creepy as Norma’s ever-watchful caretaker, Max — they manage to capture the nuances of human behavior even as they steer a stage production rife with outsize touches.Mr. Lloyd’s “Sunset Boulevard” shines most brightly when this humanity blazes through the undeniable theatrical dynamite he summons throughout. When it doesn’t, it’s still lovely to look at — or at least impossible to look away from.

With a Remarkably Intense Performance, Nicole Scherzinger Brings to Life the Fictional Star at the Center of ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ Norma Desmond

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