Sunset Boulevard: Articles & Reviews
The Women of 'Sunset Boulevard'
By David Finkle
The Village Voice
3/26/96
Our next award is for excellence in recorded performance by an actress singing the Norma Desmond songs from Sunset Boulevard. The nominees are: Betty Buckley, currently playing the role on Broadway; Glenn Close, who created the role in Los Angeles and then on Broadway; Patti LuPone, who sometimes did and sometimes didn't sing the songs in her recent Patty LuPone on Broadway; Elaine Page, who replaced Buckley who replaced LuPone in London and who's the next Broadway Norma; Diahann Carroll, who's singing the songs in the Toronto production; Helen Schneider, who's doing the first production in Germany; Shirley Bassey, who always likes to wrap her sharp tongue around an anthem; Laurie Beechman, one of the most reliable Lloyd-Webber players; and Barbara Streisand, who likes to be the first on her continent to introduce new Andrew Lloyd-Webber tunes to a wider record buying public.
And the winner is -- may I have the envelope, please (rip! gasp!) -- Betty Buckley!
Truth to tell, she wins in a walk. Why? You could say Buckley's given herself the most chances to get it right, since she's recorded one of the show's biggest songs, "With One Look," three times. There are two versions on recent solo albums -- on (Sterling) with a small combo led by her longtime musical director, Kenny Werner; the other (BBC Sterling) recorded live with the 65-musicians-strong BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Big Band. There's also the four-song CD of Sunset Boulevard songs (Really Useful) available now and for the forseeable future only at the Minskoff Theatre.
Getting it right, however, isn't the explanation for Buckley's superiority. What Buckley brings to the recorded versions is a vocal and acting dynamism her collegues don't or can't muster for that chin-first hauteur they're all asked to affect as Desmond. Broadway's current Norma has a clarion mezzo-soprano she can modulate to a girlish whisper when need be, but can also turn to silver bullets. Also, both onstage and in the studio, she's scrupulous about remaining in character as the frightening, frightened onetime silent-screen star.
The other Normas (still talking Lloyd-Webber, not Bellini) fail to match Buckley's skills, although Paige on Encore (WEA import), where she reprises songs with which she's associated, comes closest -- she's got metal in her tones and mettle in her readings. Helen Schneider, who to date only has a two-band version of "The Perfect Year" available (one English, one German -- Ein Gutes Jahr -- on Polydor) has pipes the Radio City Music Hall organ would envy. But her teasing version seems intended for commercial purposes rather than for acting accuracy.
Glenn Close, who won the Tony as Desmond, possesses the acting chops to make Norma ghastly and grand, but her voice has a great divide -- soprano, alto. This means that where Buckley hits vocal home runs, Close settles for the carefully placed bunt. This situation seems to have dictated her performance (on Polydor). Presentational restraint is the province of old age rather than middle age, and explains why Close's interpretation, on disk at least, suggests the aging vamp is closer to 80 than the called-for 50.
LuPone's drawbacks on record are the opposite of Close's. With her Julliard training, she has the depth to portray Desmond, but acting doesn't seem her intention. Vocal production does. (In this, LuPone has much in common with Desmond: she knows she's a star.) Whereas LuPone on stage usually leaves most of her consonants in the wings to concentrate on her billowing vowels, on record (also Polydor) she includes them. Nonetheless, she still sounds intent only on drawing attention to her melting legatos -- attention getting that, in the long run, is off-putting.
Carroll, whose initial appeal on records was playful innocence (we're talking the 1950's now), has shed all that in favor of a by-the-numbers portrayal -- perfectly acceptable but so much without particular personality that even her longtime fans might not guess who this curt, commanding singer is. Maybe it's what she thought she had to do in order to demonstrate that the nontraditional casting decision made sense. If so, it works at the expense of Carroll's being -- to the ear, at least -- herself within the context of pretending to be someone else. Laurie Beechman, handling her material on The Andrew Lloyd-Webber Album (Varese Sarabande) as if she were cutting fabric for Armani suits, is so pure she shows these declarations up for what they are: limited in meaning when not delivered in character. As for Bassey -- the recording is called Shirley Bassey Sings the Songs of Andrew Lloyd Webber (EMI), and it comes across as a tie-in promotion and an audition. The shocker is the extent to which Bassey's voice and breath control have deteriorated. Those who have always appreciated Bassey's supersonic approach to singing will be dazed and confused; she, like Close, sounds older than Norma's years.
Where does Streisand fit into this Norma-lity? "With One Look" on her Back to Broadway disk (Columbia) is -- rare for her -- dull. Her spin on "As If We Never Said Goodbye," however, is a strong second to Buckley's. It has a conviction and urgency that makes you put down what you're doing and pay attention.
Which brings us to the pressing question: why are the major Sunset Boulevard arias, as Buckley calls them, such diva delights? Think about what the Don Black - Christopher Hampton - Amy Powers words to these showy, operatic melodies express -- sentiments like "With one look/I put words to shame/Just one look/Sets the screen aflaime," and "Watch me fly/We all know I/can do it." Notice how both outbursts, tidily programmed one per act, make essentially the same statement: I was great once, and I'm going to be great again. They celebrate show-biz magnificence. (It's no mistake that Desmond's first word, spoken to a man in shadows, is "you" and her last, with lights trained on her, is "me.") The songs insist on adulation, not only for Norma but the actress playing her as well, since the two are, in a very real sense, one and the same.
Pauline Kael once observed that it takes a star to play a star, and the scrambling to play Desmond indicates Kael isn't the only one who's noticed. So have LuPone, Close, Buckley, Streisand, Carroll, Schneider, Bassey, Clark, and anyone else getting set to demand we recognize the power -- on stage and disk of that goodbye look.