Directors remake ‘Sunset Blvd.,’ ‘Romeo + Juliet’ and ‘Our Town’ for a new Broadway era
Three shows well known to theater audiences have undergone radical Broadway makeovers this fall at the hands of directors who recognize that plays and musicals must be in dialogue with their times.
Not everyone is on board with this premise. There are theater lovers, purists you might call them, who would prefer to see a work as its author intended it to be seen. The job of the director, in this view, is to fulfill the playwright’s vision. But an artist’s vision is subject to interpretation, which is to say reinterpretation. Art leaves gaps that invite collaborative dreaming. That is one way Shakespeare manages to keep holding the mirror up to nature.
There are limits, some would argue, to how far a work can be remade in the image of its interpreter. But as director Peter Brook reminds us in “The Empty Space,” “If you just let a play speak, it may not make a sound. If what you want is for the play to be heard, then you must conjure the sound from it.”
Jamie Lloyd, Sam Gold and Kenny Leon, three directors who don’t have all that much in common, conjure unexpected sounds from revivals that upend audience expectations. Newness is found in some very familiar places.
Lloyd has brought his sensational (and sensationalizing) production of “Sunset Blvd.,” starring a nuclear Nicole Scherzinger, to Broadway after its triumph in London’s West End. Gold, who has been deconstructing his way through the Shakespeare canon, has delivered a “Romeo + Juliet” in the form of rave. And Leon has recast Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and made it a reflection of today’s multicultural America.
For all its demographic changes, Leon’s “Our Town,” which is infused with spirituals from wide-ranging religious traditions, completely accepting of an interracial relationship and welcoming of other forms of diversity that likely would have been pushed to the outer margins in the Grover’s Corners that Wilder imagined, feels utterly in sync with the play’s prevailing spirit. Lloyd’s “Sunset Blvd.,” by contrast, blasts away with impunity to create a vastly different experience — a kinetic multimedia concert, in which Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music and Don Black and Christopher Hampton’s lyrics are freed from the procedural nature of Black and Hampton’s book.
In yet another directorial gambit, Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” looks, sounds and no doubt smells like teen spirit in a production determined to ignite a new generation’s love affair with the play. Kit Connor (from “Heartstopper”) and Rachel Zegler (María in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story”) make a magnetic (if imperfectly matched) Gen Z Romeo and Juliet in a frenzied party version of Shakespeare’s tragedy that has the welcoming raucousness of an epic bash thrown by the LGBTQ+ characters from “Heartstopper.”
Lloyd, a British theater director with continental European ways, receives prominent billing onstage as the production’s credits roll as they would for a movie. Webber has given his blessing to the director, who imposes many of his signature ploys familiar to those who have seen his 2023 Broadway remodeling of “A Doll’s House” (starring Jessica Chastain) or his inventive (and highly caffeinated) “Cyrano de Bergerac” that justly won acclaim at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2022.
Illustration is not Lloyd’s method. He abstracts the written text, creating space between the characters and their lines. Microphones scramble dialogue so that voices become disembodied. In “Sunset Blvd.,” based on Billy Wilder’s 1950 film, the camera is undeniably king. The darkened stage, swathed in movie projector fog, seems like a studio set in which dreams are manufactured through live projections along with more traditional Hollywood means.
Scherzinger’s reincarnated Norma Desmond, strutting around the stage with the swagger of an Instagram influencer, must be ready at a moment’s notice for her selfie. What’s striking about the casting is that Scherzinger hardly resembles the image of a washed-up movie queen. Exquisite to look at, she seems ageless on stage — until, that is, Young Norma (Hannah Yun Chamberlain) comes out of the shadows and the lines on older Norma’s face are projected in high definition for all to see.
Lloyd’s idea of celebrity is of a very recent vintage. In this reimagining of “Sunset,” you don’t need to depend on Cecil B. DeMille for your big closeup. Cameras, like guns, are ubiquitous — and just as impossible to control.
Tom Francis plays Joe Gillis, the down-on-his-luck screenwriter, who gets caught in the web of Norma Desmond’s spider lair on Sunset Boulevard. He’s not only the show’s tragically doomed protagonist but also its storyteller, and he anchors the production with a handsome ordinariness. With the notable exception of David Thaxton’s Max, Norma’s watchdog servant and curator of her glory days, the ensemble that populates this Hollywood world is young, diverse and costumed to reflect today’s incoming generation of entertainment industry dreamers.
Grace Hodgett Young, wearing sneakers and long sweat socks, plays Betty Schaefer, the bright studio script reader who tries to revive Joe’s passion, first as a writer and then as man. Her lack of glamour is in sharp contrast to Scherzinger’s Norma, who flits about like a vampire in a black slip dress. Betty represents tangible reality while Norma embodies seductive illusion in a musical that dramatizes the unfair fight between them for Joe’s jaded soul.
A former member of the Pussycat Dolls, Scherzinger has a pop voice that can soar to operatic heights. Her big numbers — “With One Look,” “As If We Never Said Goodbye” — have an otherworldly quality. Her voice reverberates throughout the St. James Theatre with seismic force. Her image is projected like that of a deity’s. Scherzinger’s singing is not only athletically thrilling but also breathtakingly beautiful. There’s a reason “Sunset Blvd.” has become the most coveted Broadway ticket since Lea Michele triumphed in “Funny Girl.”
Lloyd’s expressionistic production doesn’t demand that Scherzinger act so much as strike poses. She is worshiped like a superstar. There’s even a winking reference to her Pussycat Dolls fame in the backstage bit that opens the second act. (A live-cam follows Francis as he wanders in and out of dressing rooms, out the stage door and around the busy Broadway neighborhood before returning to resume the show.)
The production is built around Scherzinger’s icon status and staggering musical gifts. When a little more traditional acting is required of her, there are signs of strain. But these fleeting moments of weakness underscore the character’s fragility, just as Glenn Close’s modest singing ability served her devastating portrayal of Norma Desmond in the 1994 Broadway premiere. (Someone should make a musical about the casting machinations that led to Close’s New York conquest after Patti LuPone originated the role in London and Faye Dunaway was dismissed before stepping foot on stage in Los Angeles.)
I was dazzled by Lloyd’s “Sunset Blvd.,” though never deeply moved by it. The horror film imagery at the end is held by Lloyd for an ungodly long time. Scherzinger’s Norma, doused in blood and adrift in madness, is treated as though she were a composite of Blanche DuBois, Medea and Sissy Spacek’s Carrie. This effect is numbing.
Close, who reprised her Tony-winning performance as Norma in the 2017 Broadway revival and added layers of authenticity burnished by time, made the musical seem weightier than it is. Lloyd modernizes the stagecraft, injecting avant-garde intrigue into what is ultimately a commercial enterprise. The production can’t hide the show’s meretricious heart, but like the song that Scherzinger endows with Puccini-esque splendor, Lloyd has discovered “new ways to dream” Webber’s musical.
Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” similarly succeeds more theatrically than dramatically. His in-the-round staging at Circle in the Square Theatre is always in leaping motion. Each actor in the 10-person cast, with the exception of Connor and Zegler, plays at least two roles. The horseplay this entails, though gamely performed, grows dizzying.
It’s easy to accept Sola Fadiran as both Capulet and Lady Capulet, as the two figures blend into Juliet’s composite parent. Tommy Dorfman manages the strange pairing of Tybalt and the Nurse. But good luck keeping straight the roles assigned to Gabby Beans, who’s called upon to play Mercutio, the Friar and the Prince. Beans is never fazed by the challenge, but the characters can’t help but come across as flimsy masks.
This giddy revival has no interest in playing by the normal Shakespearean rules. The production features a score by Jack Antonoff, the Grammy-winning music artist and producer who has worked with some of the biggest names in the business (Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and Kendrick Lamar, among them). Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” seems to be taking its cues from “& Juliet,” the hit Broadway jukebox musical that features songs by Max Martin and other artists in a “Romeo and Juliet” sequel that imagines what might have happened had Juliet lived.
The audience at the Saturday matinee audience I attended was filled with young people who seemed delighted by the rambunctious high jinks. Connor and Zegler are radiant as the young lovers, though the chemistry between them is more of an idea than a palpable reality. Connor has more facility with the poetry; Zegler is in her element when expressing her character in song. Pity and fear get lost in the shuffle of Gold’s hyperactive staging, which rouses more emotion in the rom-com moments (the sexy acrobatics of the balcony scene elicits a chorus of squeals) than in the sepulcher climax.
Sniffy Shakespeare scholars and demanding drama critics clearly aren’t the target audience. But I can’t help remembering the National Theatre film of “Romeo and Juliet” starring Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley that came out during the pandemic. Simon Godwin’s production, which aired on PBS, proved it was possible to be dynamically contemporary while still faithful to the tragedy’s true source of timelessness, its dramatic poetry.
“Our Town,” unfolding at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre like a glorious hymn, was the play I didn’t realize just how badly our country needed right now. I saw Leon’s production before the election and found it balm for the soul of a divided nation. Now, after the election, I think the National Institutes of Health should purchase tickets for every American who would like to go. Wilder’s drama, offering a guided tour of an ordinary town going about its diurnal business, reminds us, through the inescapable shadow of mortality, of what we have in common.
The play’s spry theatricality has no trouble accommodating Leon’s 21st century vision of Grover’s Corners. The character of the Stage Manager (played by Jim Parsons with a take-me-as-I-am dignity) sets the stage for a drama that relies on the imaginative participation of the audience to see props that aren’t there and accept the passage of years on the Stage Manager’s say-so.
Making the role his own with his distinctive blend of solemn gravity and ironic urbanity, Parsons is the standout in the cast. I also appreciated Katie Holmes’ no-nonsense Mrs. Webb. But this is a production in which the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts.
Zoey Deutch’s Emily Webb and Ephraim Sykes’ George Gibbs, the young couple who discover love and are taught the hard lesson of loss, don’t on their own drive home the pathos, but they are in perfect tune with Leon’s inclusive vision.
Unfolding on a set of distressed wooden planks and hanging lanterns, “Our Town” gleams like a restored antique in this Broadway revival. Leon has been one of the most in-demand Broadway directors in recent years. He has a gift for making older works, such as “Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch” “and “A Soldier’s Play,” seem newly minted. But perhaps that’s because his ultimate aim is to serve the author. He updates the story only to make it live again in our time.
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