Sunset Boulevard at the Savoy Theatre London – Reviews

"Ready for her close up? Nicole Scherzinger smashes it"

"It’s a physically and emotionally exposing performance in a tour de force of a show"

"Nicole Scherzinger absolutely bloody smashes it as Hollywood diva Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical, dazzlingly reborn by director Jamie Lloyd. She brings not only an operatically powerful voice but shrewd comedy, harrowing pathos and a dancer’s physical precision to the washed-up silent star, besotted with young screenwriter Joe (newcomer Tom Francis, who is excellent)."

"It’s a physically and emotionally exposing performance... She’s not afraid to look absurd, or histrionic, and finds a new truth and even dignity in the character as a result."

"It’s a tour de force of a show, in love with showbiz and the creation and destruction of illusions. The art deco glamour of the Savoy Theatre makes it the perfect setting."

"In one number, Max describes Norma as The Greatest Star of All. But right now in London theatre, I reckon it’s Scherzinger."

"Nicole Scherzinger is magnetic in a stunning new Sunset Boulevard"

"Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical is reimagined for our image-obsessed age at London’s Savoy Theatre"

"The genius of Jamie Lloyd’s stunning new production of the 1993 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical (book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton) is the way it rips the story away from its lavish trappings and places it in a drifting, noirish limbo: an empty space crafted by fame. It’s a choice that splices the moody black-and-white palette of Billy Wilder’s original 1950 film with the lush music of the stage show and the dizzying pace of our own celebrity culture. And what nails it is a sensational performance from Nicole Scherzinger."

"Scherzinger is magnetic: imperious, unpredictable, twining herself around Francis in a tango one moment, playfully flirting with a camera the next."

"Lloyd and his creative team use the interplay of film, light and shadow to sculpt the space and shape the action, but also to demonstrate how the screen image can warp lived experience. This can be dazzling"

"Mind-blowing video and a truly singular use of pop star Nicole Scherzinger power Jamie Lloyd’s triumphantly out-there take on the Lloyd Webber classic"

"The Brit super-director dramatically deploys live video and erstwhile Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger to stunningly bridge the gap between the dark comedy of Billy Wilder’s original 1950 film classic and the more earnest stylings of Webber’s 1993 hit"

"It’s an incredibly gutsy thing of Scherzinger to do, especially with dancer Hannah Yun Chamberlain on hand to explicitly play the role of a young, beautiful, silent Norma. There’s something thrillingly kamikaze about her full-on embrace of the insecurities of the ageing star. She can also sing with staggering power"

"It’s hard not to fixate on Scherzinger, but it’s a terrific cast all round. In many ways it’s Francis who actually carries the production"

"Really, the show is the triumph of Lloyd and his creative team. From a purely technical perspective this is just stunning, making astounding use of live video"

"Is ‘Sunset Boulevard’ a good musical? I don’t really know the answer to that... But as a piece of live theatre this is truly awesome stuff."

"Nicole Scherzinger is stunning"

"With its stark, prop-free design, its noirish black-and-white palette, its jagged, sinewy choreography and its inspired use of live video, it’s as dark and glittering as a black diamond, and as lean and lethal as a stiletto blade."

"... we’re reminded of the pressure that we inflict on ourselves, turning our lives into movies on social media, filtering out our imperfections. Norma may only feel fully alive in front of a camera; yet what a tyrant that lens becomes when we all carry one around every day in our pocket."

"She is stunning, yet it is also a courageous portrayal, devoid of vanity. Scherzinger is unafraid of looking unlovely; she is often funny or ridiculous, and sometimes terrifying, and while her voice, a blend of honey and ground glass, is mighty, she also contorts it into howls of ugly desperation and roars of delusional grandiosity."

"Francis is a fine match for her, with a big, muscular voice and a loose-limbed swagger that comes into its own in the show’s Act II coup de théâtre"

"If there is a weakness here, it is Lloyd Webber’s score, which, while swollen with richly rhapsodic, ravishingly melodramatic melodies, also features a few recurring bouncy, nursery-rhyme-ish refrains that feel jarringly at odds with the production’s mood and aesthetic"

"Fading pop star plays fading film icon - to perfection! Nicole Scherzinger really IS ready for her close-up"

"Buy the best ticket you can afford"

"Nicole Scherzinger nails it from the off. Any doubts I had about a Pussycat Doll playing Hollywood's answer to Miss Havisham were banished pronto."

"Forget Billy Wilder's hammy noir original, and the lavish productions of this Andrew Lloyd Webber musical we're used to. Here is a thrillingly fresh and surprisingly dark revival. For my money (and for a good seat do bring a wheelbarrow of it) this is the show of the year."

"Director Jamie Lloyd, who's been toiling at his stripped-back and moody style of revival for years, has finally hit the sweet spot."

"Nicole Scherzinger is an unmistakable triumph"

"The former X Factor judge was a controversial casting choice but shows the shattering force of a sonic boom in this lush production"

"Whether you buy into the casting justification or no, what’s not in doubt is the intensity and purity of the experience that Lloyd, applying an experimental lens (and tricksy live camera-work) to the lushly beautiful, hypnotic show, unleashes."

"There is a magnificence in simplicity, and Scherzinger’s Norma, initially drawing herself regally downstage, in black dress and shades, her dark hair long with a soupcon of the untamed warrior, has a poise that thrills. When she lets loose with her lungs, though, this creature from the pre-talkies attains the shattering force of a sonic boom."

"The unrelentingly stark evening has its longueurs, but it’s hard not to salute Scherzinger’s unmistakable triumph or fall in love with Lloyd Webber’s satisfyingly sinister opus once again."

"Nicole Scherzinger sure can sing – but why the standing ovations?"

"Jamie Lloyd’s take on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is a magnificently stylish evening"

"Jamie Lloyd is not a director who treats the classics deferentially. Rather he strips them down, roughs them up and, if all is going to plan, polishes them to a new and dazzling sheen... If he doesn’t manage quite such reinvention with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical take on the Billy Wilder film classic, it is nonetheless a magnificently stylish evening."

"The cast are ostentatiously miked up and the volume is pumped to aggressive levels; a slick touch has actors despondently discard their head mikes in front of us when their characters depart the story."

"Her performance is big on ethereal aura, melodramatic arm gestures and hair-swishing, but she is less skilled at suggesting any interesting interiority for Norma. She is fragile but fierce, a wounded, half-demented animal, who belts out an imperious summary of her former silver screen magic in “With One Look”."

"Slinky Nicole Scherzinger astounds in Sunset Boulevard"

"Casting the singer as damaged diva Norma Desmond is a masterstroke"

"Bombastic, brash but never boring, the director Jamie Lloyd takes multiple gambles with his bold, modern staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Hollywood musical noir Sunset Boulevard. Not all pay off, but a masterstroke is his headline-grabbing casting of the pop singer and X Factor judge Nicole Scherzinger as his leading lady"

"While her projection of dialogue occasionally lacks oomph, her crystalline, full-bodied singing of demanding musical numbers astounds. By the closing bars of With One Look she had the audience in thrall. A man next to me had tears coursing down his cheeks."

"Nicole Scherzinger camps it up to showstopping perfection"

"Jamie Lloyd’s dark, kitsch revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1991 musical about a faded Hollywood star is full of delicious metatheatrical twists"

"No one would expect avant garde superstar director Jamie Lloyd to handle 1991 musical Sunset Boulevard with misty-eyed tenderness – not least its brave and trusting parents Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black. And, of course, he doesn’t. Even so, there’s something shiver-inducingly thrilling about the way Lloyd thrusts this story into darkest night, setting it in a haunted Hollywood backlot where huge suggestive shadows loom and blood-soaked gothic terrors emerge."

"Stark as this show’s monochrome lighting and design are, they still manage to create a sense of ornate grandeur, of black-and-white movie nostalgia. In Fabian Aloise’s brilliantly rich choreography, the chorus rise and fall like hammered piano keys, tumbling in canon to amplify Norma’s growing torment."

"This sense that Joe is dramatising his own life is heightened by a masterful metatheatrical twist in the second act which had the whole audience breathless with glee"

"... Scherzinger bringing rich, unfussy, powerful depth to torch songs like “As If We Never Said Goodbye”. It’s the kind of uncompromisingly brilliant performance that makes you want to use cliches like “tour de force”."

"An evening of dark delights"

"Watching former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger as the ageing silent movie star Norma Desmond isn't quite as if Margot Robbie had been cast as Baby Jane, but it's close."

"... from the moment she enters, Scherzinger takes hold of the role and shakes it into her own shape, delivering her signature song With One Look like a Satanic incantation, her voice swooping and soaring on wings of witchcraft."

"The smoky, haze-filled stage mimics Billy Wilder’s movie more than any previous production, set in what seems more like an abandoned sound studio than gothic mansion."

"Francis pitches the cool cynicism of the hapless Gillis just right and displays enormous courage"

"Grace Hodgett Young as Betty Schaeffer, the smart girl who falls for him but fails to save him from his fate, is intelligent and moving. But it is David Thaxton as Max Von Mayerling, Norma’s faithful retainer, who anchors the melodrama in emotional reality. It’s an evening of dark delights."

"Nicole Scherzinger stars in a revival like no other"

"Jamie Lloyd’s production of the musical version of Sunset Boulevard puts an extra grand into grand guignol. It’s both over the top and perfectly controlled – as hard and rigorous as adamantine, as brilliant as a diamond."

"It also superbly showcases the power of its star, Nicole Scherzinger, who gives a performance of astounding clarity and commitment."

"Yet that’s the cleverness of Lloyd’s concept. He creates a meta-theatrical world, both cinematic and stagey, where we the audience are “those wonderful people out there in the dark.”"

"Lloyd Webber’s music too, reorchestrated by him and David Cullen and played by an orchestra led by conductor Alan Williams, re-emerges as if freshly written, its soaring melodies held in check with the harshness of Black’s biting words. Shafts of humour appear too."

"Not everything benefits from the knowingness of this approach. Both Francis, permanently disgruntled as Joe, and David Thaxton as the loyal retainer Max sing with power, but their characters are writ as large as any silent movie star’s."

"Her voice is a wonder, both seductive and subtle, but big enough to raise the roof. It’s an extraordinary performance in a beautiful rethinking of one of Lloyd Webber’s greatest shows. A Sunset Boulevard like no other, revealing its dark heart and deep grandeur."

"Nicole Scherzinger dazzles in Jamie Lloyd’s radical rework"

"Lloyd brings hipster edginess, style and unpredictability to this revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical – though it’s more surface-level than penetrating closeup"

"e have come to expect the unexpected from Jamie Lloyd. The director’s 2019 revival of Evita gave Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical a hipster-ish edginess, and it is the same for this production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical, to which he brings ferocious unpredictability."

"Nicole Scherzinger as Norma is not only a formidable vocalist but, as a celebrity playing a woman who is wrestling with the loss of her own celebrity, it is inspired casting for its circularity. The show has a stupendous sense of reinvention, with an end scene so arresting that it surprises even those who know what’s coming. So why, with all these riches, does it leave this critic so removed and restless? Perhaps because the glut of concepts are not unified."

"This all draws circles within circles, is playful in its humour, but sits oddly against the production’s otherwise brooding tone. An exploration of celebrity culture is found in meta glances at Scherzinger’s fame, but these also cause a clash between the has-been character portrayed on stage and the superstar status of the actor playing her."

"For some, it may be the show of the year. For me it was emotionally empty. Either way, few people will walk out indifferent."

"Nicole Scherzinger is seductive but not quite ready for her close-up"

"You have to salute her courage in taking on the legacy of Patti LuPone et al. This audacious production from the enfant terrible Jamie Lloyd will no doubt pull in audiences purely on the strength of Scherzinger’s name. She looks fantastic, although that isn’t necessarily an advantage when you are portraying a star whose best days are far behind her. But in the end this is a show that exposes her limitations as an actress and a singer."

"We’ve come to expect the unexpected from Lloyd, and this revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical certainly delivers on that front."

"In the end, though, the camera trickery becomes overbearing."

"What about her singing voice? Scherzinger, who studied musical theatre in her youth, possesses the lung power, but too often you can hear her grinding through the gears."

"A young ensemble, choreographed by Fabian Aloise, generates something of the energy that we saw in Lloyd’s brilliant Cyrano de Bergerac. Best of all, the musical director Alan Williams oversees a lush orchestral backdrop. Perhaps the best way to enjoy the evening is to just close your eyes."

"Nicole Scherzinger hammers home the drama as Norma Desmond"

"The director Jamie Lloyd seizes the story of Norma Desmond, the deluded, faded movie star, and shakes it: the first thing to drop out is furniture."

"Lloyd, not afraid of ramming home a point, runs black-and-white video of the action at the back of the stage: massive closeups of tears, uvulas and mics caterpillaring across singers’ cheeks, like scars."

"Homage dwarfs individual tragedy here. Nicole Scherzinger, formerly of the Pussycat Dolls, sings sumptuously: creamy and hammering. Yet she never sacrifices beauty to expressiveness... Purring and snarling, she sounds desperate, but never ravaged or – more damaging – ludicrous."

"Genre swamps character: it is a dazzling argument, but more hologram than heart."

"Nicole Scherzinger Captivates in a Daring ‘Sunset Boulevard’"

"A stripped-back revival in London, directed by Jamie Lloyd, brings the classic musical into the present day, and gives Scherzinger a career-defining performance."

"The production, starring the singer Nicole Scherzinger in a career-defining performance, opened Thursday at the Savoy Theater and runs through Jan. 6, 2024. I can’t imagine another London show generating comparable buzz this season. For that, credit the maverick director Jamie Lloyd, whose tightly focused, stripped-back aesthetic is on full view here."

"Scherzinger finds a predatory allure in the character that is both captivating and chilling, and it is easy to see why the hapless young screenwriter Joe Gillis (an excellent Tom Francis) succumbs to Norma’s entreaties to help craft a screen comeback as Salome."

"The vocals throughout are impressive, and the lyrics’ cynical musings on Hollywood (“This stinking town”) are lushly served by the musical director Alan Williams’s orchestra."

"Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom’s video design pulls off a real coup with this sequence, though followers of the Belgian director Ivo van Hove will recognize the technique of folding celluloid into the theater."

"But for all its nods to the past, this “Sunset Boulevard” belongs to the here and now. There’s not a whiff of nostalgia to the production, which takes an established musical by the scruff of the neck and sends it careering into the modern day."

"Nicole Scherzinger Delivers in a Technologically Audacious but Emotionally Empty Reimagining"

"With Nicole Scherzinger slammed into Jack Knowles’ fierce spotlight, the moment, as well as the character, most certainly arrives. Whether it is sustained is another matter. Like almost everything in director Jamie Lloyd’s arresting new production, the effect is undeniably theatrical. But is it always properly dramatic?"

"Not for one second is there any doubt that Scherzinger has a dominating presence and magnificent money notes."

"... Lloyd’s aesthetic is the last word in stripped-down. Echoing Billy Wilder’s amazingly bitter original film, the entire production happens in black and white — until, that is, the blood."

"Though the musical may be 30 years old, his production’s undeniably exciting obsession with tech and visuals is a cleverly 21st century take."

"The oddest thing about Lloyd Webber, Christopher Hampton and Don Black’s material is that so grand and gothic a show actually shrouds a chamber piece for just four principals. They should have the space to show a range of emotions, but instead they’re merely encouraged to display extremes. There’s precious little connective middle ground."

"Nicole Scherzinger stars in a sexy, seismic ‘Sunset Boulevard’ in London"

"Some will view the striking changes to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Sunset Boulevard,” and by extension the classic 1950 Billy Wilder film it’s based on, as trampling on what was divine. They’re needlessly pearl-clutching. Because what Lloyd has wisely left intact in his jolting new London revival, starring Nicole Scherzinger as that restless recluse Norma Desmond, are the sturdy bones of a timeless American tragedy. His gut reno is absolutely gut-wrenching."

"But her [Scherzinger's] breathtaking, feral Norma is, nonetheless, a grand creature of showbiz who’s been shunned by Hollywood’s cruelly short attention span by the time she’s just 40 years old."

"... there have been some shrewd cuts made to Don Black and Christopher Hampton’s book and Lloyd Webber’s score to hurry things along. So long! Farewell!"

"Lloyd, known for a sleek aesthetic, tosses in a slew of directorial flourishes that click and never come off as tired gimmicks, like they so often did in his “A Doll’s House.”"

"After this “Sunset,” in which his sumptuous score wraps around us like a pashmina, Lloyd Webber can proudly shout, “I’ve come home at last!”"