Sunset Boulevard: Articles & Reviews
Sunset Sunrise
Betty Buckley, the new 'Boulevard' star, is the shining-est Norma Desmond of them all
By John Simon
New York Magazine
August 7, 1995
I have now caught my third and best Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard: Betty Buckley. Thanks to her, we finally have a show on which the sun also rises. In the original. London production, Patti LuPone's Norma was a tough gutter sparrow, a mettlesome American Edith Piaf. She sang and belted well, acted hard as nails, and was solidly of a piece. But of a small piece, because Miss LuPone is short of stature, and stature is what Norma Desmond, the fire-breathing silent movie star who fell prey to sound, has to have. If you tell me that Gloria Swanson, the movie Norma, was also short, I reply, "Remember Alan Ladd!" The movies can manufacture tallness out of anything: camera angles or orange crates. Onstage, you have to have at least one foot on the floor; in the old movies, this was required only in the bedroom scenes.
So, Miss LuPone's all-important staircase scenes-regal descents and scurrying ascents-fell flat. If you are petite, barely jutting over the balustrade, you simply can't staircase the joint. And what a joint! John Napier has designed a palazzo horrendously opulent and huge enough that it could easily have been shared by the Gaekwar of Baroda and the Grand Mogul of Lahore. It made Miss LuPone look less like the chatelaine than like the domestic help.
Along came Glenn Close, as the Los Angeles and New York Norma, tall and commanding. Close, but no cigar. Her Norma looked like a cross between a cigar-store Indian and a cathedral gargoyle, enough to scare the bejesus out of any man she'd want to drag into her lair-Joe Gillis, the down-on-his-luck screenwriter, no exception. The way Miss Close hammed and mugged would have put the old-time Hollywood vamps to shame; there is. after all, such a thing as too much vamplitude. On top of which, she couldn't really sing. Trying to follow one of her songs was like attempting to complete a connect-the-dots drawing with several numbers missing.
Then there was the problem of the rest of the New York cast, a hand-me-down from L.A. Alan Campbell, the Gillis, was a rather too ordinary Joe. Neither as handsome nor as ambiguous as William Holden in the movie, he had something tentative, not to say chorus-boyish, about him. Still, he was an acceptable preliminary sketch, and he has improved with time. Now I can believe him and, more important, feel for him. I had more trouble with Alice Ripley, as Betty, the sweet 22-year-old fiancee of Joe's friend Artie. An aspiring screenwriter herself, she collaborates with Joe on developing one of his short stories into a screenplay; the two fall in love, with dire consequences. Miss Ripley was competent but smug; she lacked the superficial invulnerability but underlying fragility of the adorable American ingenue.
The other consequential roles were decently handled. George Hearn -- as Norma's discoverer, former director, first husband, and now devoted butler -- sang well and acted right but without the wonderful creepiness with which Erich von Stroheim stamped the role of Max von Mayerling. As Cecil B. DeMille, Alan Oppenheimer was probably better than DeMille himself: tough in a likable way, dishonest only to be kind. The others didn't matter, and still don't.
Oh, but the scenery! In New York as in London, I was overwhelmed by Norma's pleasure dome, and the way it moved hydraulically down and up, allowing for a horizontally bisected stage, the equivalent of a split screen. Above were the lonely, sclerotic doings in Norma's xenophobic Xanadu; below, the cheerful New Year's Eve conviviality among a bunch of Hollywood hopefuls. As a result, I underrated the no smaller virtues of the other sets. And then the breathtaking, mind-boggling, almost show-stopping costumes of Anthony Powell, worthy of that series of novels by his literary namesake. A dance to the music of time, indeed. These costumes are a ritual dance of bygone splendors, and a funeral dance for the Theda Baras and Clara Bows never to be seen again.
Less successful are the somewhat uncomfortably through-composed score by Andrew Lloyd Webber and the book and Iyrics by Don Blake and Christopher Hampton, based on the Billy Wilder film. A lot of high camp here: What else to make of a steal from Oscar Wilde ("I'm sorry, I don't usually read private cigarette cases") followed closely by one from Noel Coward ("Mad about the boy")? There is some fun left in the words, as also in Trevor Nunn's sporadically inventive staging, but it is all a bit like an out-of-focus projection of the movie. The songs have that slightly overripe, vaguely cloying syncretism that Lloyd Webber specializes in, but with it an undeniable professionalism and hummability. They sound especially good when sung by someone such as Steven Stein-Grainger, George Hearn's temporary replacement, a trained operatic singer with an exceptionally fine head voice. His Max, however, lacks age, histrionic authority, and cojones.
But never mind: There is Betty Buckley, whose presence appears to have rewritten, recast, and redirected the entire show. Unlike previous Normas, she abounds in childlikeness, girlishness, womanliness, and age-old humanity-the whole spectrum. Whereas other Normas made me laugh and shudder, this one also made me smile and cry. Moreover. she brings attractiveness and sexiness to the role. At last, Joe Gillis has a believable and disturbing dilemma. To be this Norma's kept man could give gigoloism a good name: no wonder Joe isn't that eager to throw it over even for a young, bright, and pretty all-American girl.
Most important of all, Miss Buckley can sing. Every note is in place, and you can hear the pianissimos as clearly as the fortes. And not only is it musical singing, but it is also musical acting. She knows how to characterize with her singing voice, how to make an emotion cantabile. And if in her speech she sometimes affects a certain petulant baby talk, her singing is flawless. It moves you as much as her acting in what is a seamlessly compelling musical-comedy performance.
Still, the original, more straightforward London ending was better, with Miss LuPone unafraid to make craziness scary. The rewritten, prettified ending shortchanges the horror, try as Miss Buckley does to make it ring true. But her basic genuineness heightens everyone else's acting while giving us a Norma who will remain the norm. With the radiant Buckley in residence, 10086 Sunset Boulevard has become as important a number in musical annals as 1066 in English history -- that of the Norma(n) Conquest.