The reviews for Sunset Boulevard are in – and it might better be called the Glenn Close show. The pared-down remount of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1994 musical features a simpler, more artistic set that only heightens and better spotlights the work of a true legend. Someway, somehow, Ms. Close manages to outdo the dazzling performance she delivered in the original production. Whether it’s her collection of years and experience or a sustained burning of this role in her mind, Ms. Close’s Norma Desmond is more complex and captivating than ever before. Frankly, it’s enough alone to make this a must-see.
NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF SUNSET BOULEVARD
The scenery may have shrunk, but that face — oh, that face — looms larger than ever. So does the ego that animates it, both indomitable and irreparably broken. “With one look,” indeed, to borrow a song lyric that describes such unsettling presence. That outrageous, over-the-top, desperate old lady shedding…
AM NEW YORK REVIEW OF SUNSET BOULEVARD
Two decades since its splashy Broadway premiere, the plot and the production history of “Sunset Boulevard,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sweeping 1990s musical treatment of Billy Wilder’s 1950 film noir, have become one and the same…
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY REVIEW OF SUNSET BOULEVARD
Great divas never die; they just wait for the next Broadway revival. Nearly 70 years after faded star Norma Desmond swanned into pop-culture legend in Billy Wilder’s classic 1950 film noir, she’s still a spangled, endlessly quotable icon of Hollywood madness — and a delicious opportunity for any actress over 40…
NEWSDAY REVIEW OF SUNSET BOULEVARD
She is big. It’s the production that got small. Glenn Close’s Norma Desmond and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard” have returned to Broadway for a limited run in a far less grandiose version than the extravaganza that won seven Tony Awards in 1995. (That was a year, not to be snotty about it, when the on…
CHICAGO TRIBUNE REVIEW OF SUNSET BOULEVARD
When Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of “Sunset Boulevard” first opened at London’s Adelphi Theatre in 1993, audiences were dazzled by John Napier’s gilded re-creation of Norma Desmond’s mansion of deranged despair. This unforgettable gothic-baroque — and irony-free — hunk of maximalist expressionism came…
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