UK Edition
Review
Glenn Close’s triumphant performance makes you feel the shock of Sunset Boulevard as if for the first time
“People want to go to the theatre and they want to feel something and come out slightly rearranged and I think this musical does that,” Glenn Close has said ahead of her West End debut, and her return to the role that won her a Tony Award on Broadway in 1995: that of Norma Desmond, the (fictional) reclusive former silent-screen star driven to murderous extremes when the handsome (much younger) Hollywood screenwriter who has moved into her extravagant gothic pile on Sunset Boulevard attempts to escape her clutches.
"Rearranged"? Absolutely. Galvanised and nerve-jangled, I’d say. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most under-valued musical, based on the 1950 noir classic by Billy Wilder, is confirmed in Lonny Price’s semi-staged revival as a glorious, creepy (if resolutely technicolor) thrill a minute – bristling with lush, brooding songs apt to nestle inside your head and keep you awake at night in tormented ecstasy. While Price hasn’t stinted on stripped-back razzmatazz (we get an imposing set of metal stairways and walkways ranging around the ENO’s 48-piece orchestra, fantastically snappy choreography from Stephen Mear too), central to the evening’s tingle-factor is Close’s performance as Norma.
On paper, it undoubtedly adds a little that this member of Hollywood royalty is playing a dethroned queen of cinema’s earliest boom-period. In practice what matters most is the mesmeric quality she brings to the role, the predatory glint in the eye, the way she drapes herself in an attitude of faded grandeur – entwining it round her kept-boy Joe (Michael Xavier, spot-on).
Close, 69, can’t eclipse the celluloid memory of Gloria Swanson. When she sings, does she have the full blast-furnace potency of say, Patti LuPone, who created the role in 1993? That’s open to question, but from the smithy of her undoubted vocal talent she draws forth one molten number after another. After her immortal retort “I am big – it’s the pictures that got small” she launches into that rousing hymn to her wordless seductive powers of yore (“With One Look”), accompanied by a fluttering repertoire of anachronistic hand-gestures; prompting a protracted ovation of admiration in the Coliseum.
Later, installed under false pretences back at Paramount and deluded into thinking her hopeless script of Salome is going to be made, her Norma rejuvenates to her triumphant love-song to the studios “As if we never said goodbye”. Deserved thunderous applause for that too. At the end, in a succession of frightful overkill dresses, she’s a reduced, scuttling creature, reeling in the glare of flash-bulbs; "I’m ready for my close-up", she says, far gone in madness, oblivious to the waiting cops.
That moment, as with so many others in the evening (spry book and lyrics by Christopher Hampton and Don Black), is openly indebted to the film. And yet the triumph of the show and it’s Close’s triumph too – is to make you feel the shock of it as if for the first time.
Sunset Boulevard is playing at the London Coliseum until May 7. Book now to avoid disappointment. Visit Telegraph Tickets or call 0844 871 2118.