Phil Hopkins, Commissioning Editor
The Sun Has Set On This Lloyd Webber Classic
On the one hand I have to admire Diva Productions’ boldness in seeking to give the show a complete new slant – modern costumes, zero scenery, live filming, ‘Bob Fosse’ style choreography and even a blonde haired, attractive leading lady (certainly not an ageing ‘silent’ movie star’) but, for me, the show moved simply too far from audience expectation.
And, if there were newbies watching – those who had not seen the original musical – then frankly many of them would have been completely lost without the advantage of a pre-show Wiki crib sheet.
With many seats vacated at the interval, the show did little to redeem itself in the second act despite a handful of sterling performances by Alison George as Norma Desmond, James Banks as young would-be scriptwriter, James Gillis, Desmond’s butler Max Von Mayerling (aka Henry Etherington), and Meg Riley as Betty Schaefer, another Hollywood writer on the up.
But the ‘vehicle’ in which they were called on to display their wares left them swimming on a black, dark stage, devoid of scenery, costumes – everyone was in black leather trousers and t-shirts – stark lighting and with a huge dance chorus that looked as if it was straight out of the London School of Contemporary Dance or that other musical, Chicago! It just didn’t feel right.
Norma Desmond was from the silent era. This should have been a cross between Mack and Mabel and Singin’ in the Rain but it was neither and, in its eagerness to be different, failed.
Producers, Andy Fretwell and Andrew Ashley, the latter also doubling as director, said, in line with company ambition, that they wanted to challenge expectations and take risks. They did just that, however, the styling was too risky, bordering on the confusing.
Desmond is the aging silent movie has-been now living in a gilded cage, a mansion on Sunset Boulevard, while Joe Gillis is the young scriptwriter who happens upon her hideaway after his car breaks down nearby.
She thinks he is the local animal undertaker who has dropped in to remove her beloved dead monkey. Frosty at first, Desmond falls for his charms whilst he develops a morbid fascination for an old-school movie star, obsessed by the Hollywood glory days and making a comeback or, as she puts it, a ‘return’.
This musical is totally dependent on Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis and I definitively warmed to George and Banks but, as I said eight years ago: ‘….it is a show that could so easily go the other way in the wrong hands.’ This time it did, which is why my glowing review of 2018 sits unhappily alongside these words.
I have left just one show at the interval – an appalling rendition of Chess – and, this time, it took me all my strength to stay the course. I’m glad I did, more for the principals than the show itself.
One for the history books.