Finally Ready for Her Close-Up

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

When Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical retelling of the Hollywood film noir classic Sunset Boulevard made its debut in London in July, audience response was respectful but restrained. The staging that opened in Los Angeles last week had playgoers shouting with delight. Part of the difference may be the American propensity for public exuberance; some is surely the special joy Angelenos derive from a sly, knowing look at the gritty world of make-believe that dominates their local commerce. But the major reason is that the creators have at last figured out what the show is meant to be -- a comedy, not a tragedy.

In London the forgotten silent-film star Norma Desmond skulked around her overdecorated mansion like a female Phantom of the Opera, remote and unreachable. In Los Angeles, even as she rages like a deranged diva, she shows endearing glints of awareness of her own tawdry emotional blackmail. A single image encapsulates the difference. When London's Norma, Patti LuPone, got her seedy protege back, by a suicide attempt, she collapsed into his arms in maudlin gratitude. The Los Angeles incarnation, Glenn Close, ends the act by lifting her bandaged arms above his embracing form, her fingers curving like talons to take him in. The former evoked weakness and despair, the rewrite an eerie grin.

The reconception involves very little change in the text -- some tinkering and one new song -- but a top-to-bottom rethinking of attitude. The intention of composer Lloyd Webber, lyricist-librettists Don Black and Christopher Hampton, choreographer Bob Avian and director Trevor Nunn was always to echo Billy Wilder's astringent film. In London, however, the team confused fidelity to the plot with fidelity of tone.

| Wilder first envisioned beginning in a morgue with sheet-covered bodies speaking in voice-over. Although that scene did not wind up in the movie, it helps explain why Sunset Boulevard can be called the film that invented camp. Egomaniacal Norma, her slavish chauffeur Max (who turns out to be her former director and ex-husband) and down-and-out screenwriter Joe Gillis, who falls into her orbit out of sympathy and a love of luxury, are all a bit ridiculous. Where the London staging took them seriously, the Los Angeles rethink sends them up. Yet it wisely manages to make them more likeable as well, so that the doomy ending retains genuine sadness.

Both LuPone and her London paramour Kevin Anderson seemed miscast. In fairness, LuPone would fare much better in the Los Angeles version. She is a skilled comic actress with an innate instinct for emotional excess. But in an ongoing dispute over who will play the role on Broadway, Close has three big advantages. She is physically much more plausible as a legendarily beautiful face. She approaches the role as a dramatic experience rather than as scenes leading up to show-stopper songs. Most important, she uncorks an almost slapstick comic inventiveness.

The one downside is that her singing voice, while warm and true, does not extract nearly as much angst or musicality as LuPone does from the anthems With One Look and New Ways to Dream. Lloyd Webber's music, as usual, has the lush extravagance and candy-box prettiness of Puccini, with themes repeated often enough to ensure their hummability. Though no single number has the pop allure of Memory or The Music of the Night, the score is probably his most coherent and effective.

If Norma propels the score, Joe Gillis carries the story. In London, Anderson seemed bloated and corrupt long before Norma got to him. In Los Angeles, Alan Campbell's selling out is much more of an emotional journey. As Betty, the budding screenwriter with whom Gillis has a professional rebirth and fleeting flirtation, Judy Kuhn can do no wrong. As Max, George Hearn finds charm and humor in an all-but-monocled Prussian stereotype.

The physical production is much the same, but the elaborate set movements mesh better. Designer John Napier has added one brilliant flash of wit. After Norma's epic mad scene ("I'm ready for my close-up"), a scrim falls and reveals an image of Close, looking girlish and made up in the beestung-lip style of the 1920s. It is, chillingly, the only time one sees Norma's legendary screen face.

The transformation of a London also-ran into a Los Angeles landmark is proof that today's long process of development for musicals is sometimes worth the trouble. Sunset Boulevard is scheduled to open on Broadway a year from now, although there is talk of advancing it to this spring. As the show stands now, tomorrow would not be a day too soon.