The monstrous, pathetic Norma Desmond, the washed-up silent film star at the heart of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, is a huge and complex role; It takes an actor with great charisma and gravitas to pull this off. Patti LuPone first played Norma in the West End, and Glenn Close also had phenomenal success on Broadway. But Sarah Brightman catapulted to fame with her role as the masterful Christine Daaé in Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. – He is not up to the task in Opera Australia’s new production, his first major theater role in three decades. Not physically, not dramatically, and certainly not vocally.
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Sunset Boulevard, a musical adaptation of Billy Wilder’s classic 1950 film, was always an odd choice for Lloyd Webber, a composer known for scale and sentimentality rather than sarcasm or satirical style. Wilder’s vision always seemed better suited to Stephen Sondheim, who flirted with his own adaptation of the material before abandoning it. Lloyd Webber’s score is sumptuous and cinematic, with a jazz-tinged swagger that evokes the period, but lacks the tangled nerves and sharp dissonance of the original. It also replaces Wilder’s perfectly calibrated pathos with unabashed humor.
The point is simple. Down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (Tim Draxl) is eager for a break at Paramount studios. An accidental encounter with faded star Norma leads her to move into her dilapidated mansion on Sunset Boulevard and into the care of a mysterious servant Max (Robert Grubb). Joe is ostensibly there to help him turn an over-the-top take on the Salome story into a workable script, but he soon becomes an overlooked man. His working relationship with a young writer, Betty Schaefer (Ashleigh Rubenach), turns into something more, but increasingly desperate Norma’s delusions and insatiable ego threaten to swallow the couple’s burgeoning happiness. It all ends in tragedy and melodrama, with guns fired, a body floating in the pool, bedtime tears and spotlights.
But Sunset isn’t really about plot, it’s about mood, theme and character. Wilder’s view of the film industry was harsh and harsh, but also lovingly drawn and self-respecting. Gillis is a man corrupted as much by the glamor of failure as by the promise of success, and Norma’s monstrosity – her tiresome need for approval, her aggressive vulnerability – is also what gives her credibility. He’s a star and deserves better. Even the great Cecil B DeMille himself (Paul Hanlon) admits this in one of the production’s more poignant scenes.
I wish Brightman could play any of these. He says the famous first lines: “I am big! The pictures got smaller” and “We didn’t need dialogue, we had faces” – as if reading the lesser content of his will. In the opening number, With One Look, she appears to inhale lungfuls of air like a guppy, only to release a series of breathy, tense and haltingly enunciated notes that barely advance above the orchestra pit. His voice improves in the second act, but his performance never moves beyond wooden and superficial.
Draxl tries extremely hard to make up for Brightman’s absence. His Gillis is sometimes determined, sometimes horrified; Although that sharp disappointment boils from the beginning, it gradually turns into self-hatred. Her scenes with Rubenach’s tough Betty are the best thing about the show, moving and original; but Lloyd Webber’s melodic talents leave him with Too Much in Love to Care, a forgettable love duet (I wish he had considered writing a better song). Grubb is hampered by a complete lack of chemistry with Brightman; The servant’s unwavering loyalty seems foolish and out of place where it should be high and noble.
The production itself is sleek and stylish; There’s a terrific lineup and some exciting playing from the Melbourne Orchestra under the musical direction of Paul Christ. The abundance of orchestrations, those languid strings and piped wind instruments bring an emotional weight. Morgan Large’s sets and costumes are richly detailed – this gloomy decorative house reminded me of Catherine de Medici’s dreary bedroom at the Chateau de Chenonceau – and Mark Henderson’s lighting and George Reeve’s projection design are sumptuous and sophisticated.
Despite the world’s largest center stage for musical theater talent, Sunset Boulevard is a slim prospect. Wilder’s original is a work of genius; a film not just about film and its corrupting eye, but also about the instability of the self, the brutal nature of looking and then looking away. Lloyd Webber and his songwriters Don Black and Christopher Hampton reduce Norma to a pale imitation of the Phantom, a strange lover in the shadows. Perhaps there is something inspired in the casting of Brightman in this role: a symbol of Lloyd Webber’s luxurious romanticism at the height of his powers and the beginning of his career, and a symbol of faded grandeur at the end.
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Sunset Boulevard is at Melbourne’s Princess Theater until 11 August, then at the Sydney Opera House from 28 August