Sunset Boulevard is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and lyrics and libretto by Don Black and Christopher Hampton. It is based on the 1950 film.
The plot revolves around Norma Desmond, a faded star of the silent screen era, living in the past in her decaying mansion on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. When young screenwriter Joe Gillis accidentally crosses her path, she sees in him an opportunity to make her return to the big screen, with romance and tragedy to follow.
Opening first in London in 1993 and then Broadway late 1994, the musical has had several long runs internationally and enjoyed extensive tours.
Broadway Cast 1994
Norma Desmond – Glenn Close
Joe Gillis – Alan Campbell
Max – George Hearn
Betty – Judy Kuhn/Alice Ripley (in this video)
Artie Green – Vincent Tumeo
Cecil B DeMille – Alan Oppenheimer
Lots of Sunset Memorabilia at Theatregold.com
Original West End Production – Adelphi Theatre
The original West End production, directed by Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Bob Avian, with costumes by Anthony Powell, opened on 12 July 1993 at the Adelphi Theatre. The cast featured Patti LuPone as Norma Desmond, Kevin Anderson as Joe Gillis, Meredith Braun as Betty Schaefer, and Daniel Benzali as Max. Billy Wilder and his wife Audrey Young were joined by Nancy Olson, who had played Betty in the original film, at the opening night performance. Wilder said, “The best thing they did was leave the script alone”, and praised LuPone. Reviews were mixed, according to the Associated Press (AP) review summary, quoting the AP critic, Michael Kuchwara: “Some reviewers felt Lloyd Webber took the sting out of a cynical tale. Wilder’s bitter brew has been diluted. … When LuPone is off stage, the show sags.'” Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times:
Much of the film’s plot, dialogue and horror-movie mood are preserved, not to mention clips used to illustrate those sequences in which [Norma and Joe] travel by car. [Black and Hampton] smartly tailor their jokes to the original screenplay’s style. … Lloyd Webber gets into the Wilder swing … with joltingly angry diatribes about Hollywood, part exposition-packed recitative and part song, in which the surprisingly dark, jazz-accented music, the most interesting I’ve yet encountered from this composer, meshes perfectly with the cynical lyrics. Anderson makes the sardonic Wilder voice an almost physical presence in Sunset Boulevard, but he is too often drowned out by both LuPone’s Broadway belt and mechanical efforts of Lloyd Webber and his director, Trevor Nunn, to stamp the proven formulas of Phantom and Les Miz on even an intimate tale. … the mammoth set advances like a glacier toward the audience or retreats, or, most dramatically, rises partly up into the flies, actors in tow.
The show closed for three weeks, re-opening on 19 April 1994, revamped to follow the Los Angeles production, with a second official “opening”. The revamped musical had a new song, “Every Movie’s a Circus”, a new set, and new stars, Betty Buckley and John Barrowman. Anita Louise Combe took the role of Betty and, as a result of her performance, was invited to play the role in the original Canadian production in Toronto the following year. Michael Bauer, who had originally played DeMille, played Max, a role he played until the end of the London run and then on the UK tour and in the BBC concert. Buckley and the production garnered improved reviews. Elaine Paige, who had filled in when Buckley was ill in 1994 took over the part in May 1995. Petula Clark filled in for Paige in September/October 1995, before taking over the role in January 1996. The last new actress to play Norma in London was Rita Moreno, who had filled in for Clark in September and October 1996. Alexander Hanson took over Joe in 1995. Graham Bickley played Joe for the final year of the run. The show closed on 5 April 1997 after 1,530 performances.
Los Angeles Production
Glenn Close in costume for Sunset Boulevard
The first American production opened at the Shubert Theatre in Century City, Los Angeles, California, on 9 December 1993, with Glenn Close as Norma and Alan Campbell as Joe. Featured were George Hearn as Max and Judy Kuhn as Betty. Lloyd Webber had reworked both the book and score, tightening the production, better organising the orchestrations, and adding the song “Every Movie’s a Circus”. This new production was better received by the critics than the premiere, and was an instant success, running for 369 performances. The production also recorded a new cast album that is well regarded. It is also the only first cast recording of the show, since the original London recording was trimmed by over thirty minutes.
Faye Dunaway was hired to replace Close and began rehearsals with Rex Smith as Joe and Jon Cypher as Max. Tickets went on sale for Dunaway’s engagement but shortly after rehearsals started, the producers announced that Dunaway was unable to sing the role to their standards; the production would shut down when Close left. Lloyd Webber’s spokesman stated: “The cancellation came despite advance ticket sales for the Los Angeles production ‘way in excess of $4 million”; Dunaway denied this. She filed a lawsuit claiming her reputation had been damaged by the producer’s claims. The producers paid her a settlement.
Original Broadway Production
The musical opened on Broadway at the Minskoff Theatre on 17 November 1994 with Close, Campbell, and Hearn recreating their roles from the Los Angeles production and Alice Ripley joining the cast as Betty. Also in the cast were Alan Oppenheimer as Cecil B. DeMille and Vincent Tumeo as Artie Green. The production opened with the highest ticket sale advance in Broadway history to that time. It closed on 22 March 1997, after playing 977 performances. Billy Wilder was in attendance on opening night and was coaxed onstage by Close for the curtain call. In a season with only one other original musical nominated, the production won several Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Score and Book; Close, with only one other nominee as Best Actress in a musical, won the Tony for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. The New York Times critic Vincent Canby later commented about the Tony season: “Awards don’t really tell you much when the competition is feeble or simply non-existent, as was the case the year that Sunset Boulevard won its Tony.” During the run, Buckley replaced Close as Norma, followed by Paige.
LuPone, who initially had been promised the Broadway run, sued Lloyd Webber and received a settlement reported to be $1 million. Frank Rich, in his book The Hot Seat, noted that these lawsuits contributed to Sunset Boulevard setting the record for the most money lost by a theatrical endeavour in the history of the United States. According to The New York Times, operating costs soared far beyond the budget, and the “Broadway production has earned back, at best, 80% of the initial $13 million”. The paper reported that during the week of 2 July 1995, “it cost $731,304 to run Sunset Boulevard, including … advertising fees of $138,352 (which had been budgeted at $40,000 a week).” The road companies also generated large financial losses. Rich puts the final figure near or above US$20 million lost, making the show what he termed a “flop-hit”, as it ran more than two years and the musical sold over a million tickets on Broadway.
Touring Productions
The first national US tour in 1996 starring Linda Balgord ended in early 1997 after only a handful of venues due to exorbitant costs involved in transporting the set. Lloyd Webber called in director Susan H. Schulman to design a scaled-down production, with Petula Clark once again in the lead opposite Lewis Cleale as Joe. This production featured Anthony Powell’s Tony Award nominated costumes, a slightly modified libretto by Schulman and Don Black and a new, more tour-friendly set by Derek McLane. The revised production, opening in Pittsburgh about a year after the closing of the original tour in Chicago, went on the road for almost two years, though it avoided the cities covered by the previous tour.
In August 2001, a UK tour commenced in Plymouth starring Faith Brown as Norma, opposite Earl Carpenter as Joe, and Michael Bauer reprising his West End performance as Max. The production had a completely new set, much simpler than the original London set, although the overall production remained closer to the original staging than the revamped US national tour. Carpenter left midway through the tour and was replaced by Jeremy Finch, who had previously understudied the role. The tour finished in late 2002 in Manchester and met with both excellent reviews and respectable ticket sales.
Ria Jones, who originated the role of Norma Desmond in the 1991 Sydmonton Workshop and understudied Glenn Close in the 2016 London revival, led a new production opening at Leicester’s Curve Theatre on 16 September 2017 for a two-week run before embarking on a national tour around the United Kingdom. Starring opposite Jones as Norma was Danny Mac as Joe Gillis. The tour, directed by Curve artistic director Nikolai Foster, transferred the musical into a Hollywood sound stage setting, designed by Colin Richmond, with acclaimed use of vintage archive film and projections designed by Douglas O’Connell.
