Sunset Boulevard review: 'dazzlingly reborn' at Savoy Theatre

"Sunset Boulevard" is about a former screen star's descent into madness. So it seems appropriate, said Matt Wolf in The New York Times, that this "bravura new West End revival" of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1993 musical "should, in creative terms, itself be a bit mad: reckless and daring, stretching its source material to the limit and beyond". Director Jamie Lloyd employs a stripped-back aesthetic and monochrome palette, and uses hand-held cameras to spotlight characters by projecting their faces "on a huge screen that broadcasts every emotion (and facial pore)". And whereas past productions have seen Norma Desmond, the screen star in question, preening in a turban and flowing garments, here Nicole Scherzinger "prowls the stage, barefoot and feline in a black slip". It's a "career-defining" performance – both "captivating and chilling". 

Scherzinger "absolutely bloody smashes it" in a production that sees "Sunset Boulevard" "dazzlingly reborn", said Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard. 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". The combination of technical wizardry and thrillingly full-blooded acting adds up to a "truly awesome" evening – and a "landmark" triumph for Jamie Lloyd, said Andrzej Lukowski on Time Out. "The pictures may have got small, but theatre has rarely felt so alive with possibility." 

I loved the energy of the ensemble and the lushness of the orchestra, but the radical staging didn't work for me, said Clive Davis in The Times. The camera trickery becomes "overbearing" – and a sequence that takes us backstage is clever, but its in-jokes (including a cardboard cut-out of Lloyd Webber) undercut the show's tragic aura. It is a production full of "riches" that nevertheless left me feeling "removed and restless", said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian – yet I can see that others will love it. What it undeniably has is a "stupendous sense of reinvention", which means few will "walk out indifferent".

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Savoy Theatre, London WC2; thesavoytheatre.com. Until 6 January 2024. Running time: 2hrs 20mins. Rating ****

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