Jamie Lloyd’s production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Sunset Boulevard, is, to put it mildly a radical departure from conventional staging. For those of you not familiar with the plot, Joe Gilles, here played by Tom Francis, is a talented Hollywood screenwriter who has fallen on hard times. In an attempt to escape two repo men, he hides himself and his car in the grounds of a seemingly abandoned mansion. There he encounters Max, the house butler, who introduces him to Norma Desmond (Nicole Scherzinger), an all but forgotten movie star who has been mysteriously waiting for him. He needs the money, and she needs someone to help shape her screenplay based on the life of Salome which she believes will bring about her Hollywood comeback. The two then form a dangerously unhealthy partnership based on greed, desperation, delusion and pity.

Despite the source material suggesting the need for decaying glamour, director Lloyd and company have opted to dispense almost entirely with the need for sets or props. Instead the audience are presented with an almost entirely black stage, occasionally augmented by a semi-translucent curtain of shining beads, while the only props are conventional wooden chairs. This may sound austere, but this version of Sunset Boulevard is breath-taking, daring and truly dazzling. The key to the staging of this production is Lloyd and lighting designer Jack Knowles’ use of light and total darkness to dramatic effect.  Different planes of space are created across the performance area as dynamic lighting effects are deployed with clinical precision. Characters appear out of the dark, perfectly isolated in pools of light, silhouettes and smoke are used to enhance the most potent moments of Scherzinger’s performance, while moments of sudden light and darkness are used to both disorientate and shock.

If all that wasn’t modern enough, the show also makes use of live video photography, with one of the actors handling a portable camera and lighting rig, the images projected onto a giant screen at the back of the stage. At times the characters play knowingly to the camera, creating moments of comedy, at others their faces loom hauntingly over the action. The effect is demented, other-worldly and utterly mesmerising. The live camerawork also allows for undoubtedly the most bravura scene that his writer has ever witnessed in a theatre. It must not be spoiled, suffice to say that the beginning of act II will surely leave you opened-mouthed, head-shaking at the sheer audacity of it all. One could complain that this moment is just a stunt, that it adds nothing to character, or story, and they would be right. But what is theatre, indeed what is art, if it is not allowed to amaze you just for the sake of it.

Now, one could reasonably say that this radical staging does not fit with the book and lyrics of the show, which after all is set in 1940s Hollywood. (Some online commentators have said that this version of Sunset Boulevard has been divorced from time and place, but anyone with a shred of knowledge of film history will recognise references to key Hollywood figures of the period and realise this can’t be true.) However, what could be a more fitting way of staging a show about movies, and movie people, then by daringly using light and shadows, darkness and smoke – the key ingredients of black and white movies. Modern behaviour also creeps into the characters’ on-stage antics, which are at times very 2020s, but due to the overall artificiality of the show these moments go by without question. It’s as if the entire production has created its own reality.

A review of this show must include considerable praise for the cast. Notably Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond, Tom Francis, as Joe Gilles, and David Thaxton as Max, Miss Desmond’s advocate, handler, servant, number one fan, and enabler. First however, a note on Scherzinger’s Desmond. Scherzinger herself has pointed out (and this is a paraphrase) that this is a re-imagined Norma Desmond, and that she didn’t want to play a crazy old lady. But even within the story as originally presented by Billy Wilder there was no particular reason (except to make her unattractive to Joe Gilles) for Norma to be particularly old or grotesque. Silent stars did find their careers extinguished suddenly when they were relatively young with the swift arrival and popularisation of sound in the late 1920s. Watching Scherzinger, I could easily believe that it was her diva-ish behaviour, and the change of acting style that came with the talkies, that made her unemployable. As for Scherzinger’s Desmond not being totally appealing to Joe Gilles despite her obvious physical attractiveness, it’s plausible that their age gap, (Tom Francis is a very young looking Gilles) and Norma’s irrational, needy behaviour would keep Gilles from giving in to her entirely.

Anyway, Scherzinger is extraordinary as Desmond. She is funny, creating moments of comedy with effortless little asides to the camera, but also sexy in a deliberately desperate way which befits the character. More dramatically, she is full of rage, which is equal parts betrayal at being left behind by the movies, un-wavering self-belief, madness and delusion. Scherzinger conveys this both in her believably fraught acting and her blow-the-roof off vocals. When she stands at the edge of the stage, smoke eddying around her, singing her heart out, full of passion and pain, her gestures reaching a near demonic frenzy, this writer could only sit in a stunned state of awe. Tom Francis more than holds his own as the determined, amoral Gilles. He is a brilliant beefcake of a performer, who manages to convey just the right amount of pity, confused emotion and laconic leading man strength. He also dances with incredible verve and has a smooth buttery voice. David Thaxton as Max, manages to tread the fine line between being ominous and pitiable necessary for this part, and possesses a gorgeous voice, deep and rich on the low notes, near-angelic on the high.

All that and I haven’t even mentioned Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music, which is knowingly seedy at times, while containing rapturous themes full of wonder and longing that will live with you long after the lights have gone down.

Jamie Lloyd’s production of Sunset Boulevard is a radical masterpiece, with an impeccable cast, that will leave you stunned, astonished, and reeling as you leave the theatre, knowing that you’ve never seen anything quite like it. Go and buy a ticket.

Sunset Boulevard is playing at the Savoy Theatre in London until January 6th 2024.

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