Still Crazy After All These Years

Sunset Boulevard at the Palace Theatre

Glenn Close and Michael Xavier in Sunset Boulevard.

            It’s been thirty-four years since she broke onto the screen, in The Big Chill, and twenty-two since she won her well-deserved Tony Award for the original production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black & Christopher Hampton’s Sunset Boulevard, and directors still aren’t sure what to do with Glenn Close.  It’s something about those cheekbones, maybe; when Close enters a scene she may as well be slicing it in half. On screen, she’s made everyone from Jeff Goldblum to Chris Pratt look entirely immature, and she enters the revival of this musical, Webber’s most openly melodic and theatrical (at the Palace through June 25^th) like a burst of Gothic smoke.  Sunset was, for Billy Wilder, in his original film, a condemnation of a Hollywood that would warp Norma Desmond, the faded silent screen star played originally by Gloria Swanson.  For Webber, though, it’s really a celebration of Hollywood, each number an ode to the kind of plucky, misguided, multicolored collectivism that makes the town run – from wannabe actors (in “This Time Next Year”) to stylists (“The Lady’s Paying”) to beauty specialists (“A Little Suffering”).  That’s why, in this production’s uneven first act, it sometimes seems as if Close and her co-stars are doing two different shows.

            Close doesn’t announce this, though.  Calling her performance a “star turn” would be reductive.  It is extraordinarily multifaceted, in turns pathetic and monstrous and heart-rending, each aspect coalesced masterfully into an arc; almost a writer’s performance, one that recognizes the character and channels it whole.  The director, Lonny Price (who wrangled another explosive performer, Emma Thompson, in the recent Lincoln Center Sweeney Todd), seems, understandably, almost afraid of Close’s talent, which may be why he doesn’t do as much with her early scenes as he does with those of his leading man, the remarkable Michael Xavier, as the screenwriter Joe Gilles.  Price prefers the hands-off approach.  When Norma sings her showstopper, “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” her co-stars stand staring at her and even clap when she finishes, and with good reason – it’s like lightning ripping through a wet paper bag.

            And that’s what Price’s production is – a wet paper bag – until about three-quarters of the way through the first act, when something mysterious happens.  It's as simple as this -- the aforementioned “The Lady’s Paying” sequence, a sartorial number led by the always welcome Jim Walton (Price’s co-star in the original production of Merrily We Roll Along) blasts the show with a shot of insulin, and suddenly it's a thrill ride, turning a more or less moribund Glenn Close vehicle into an argument that this musical, never before revived on Broadway, is Webber’s best.  I’m inclined to believe it.

            Walton’s efforts, which encompass three or four roles and a succession of unfortunate wigs, are part of the proof that Close or no Close, this is a really good show.  Chief among his assistants in this magic trick is Xavier, whose evolution from vanilla leading male to dissolute, disillusioned, louche leech from the first to the second act is utterly surprising.  Bringing up the rear but no less important is the music supervision of the eminent Kristen Blodgette, whose lush orchestrations set the scene in place of any extensive set design.  (The reduced, and efficient, scenery is by James Noone.)

            But at the Palace, where Liza played and Fanny Brice mugged, you know what you’re getting into.  The evening belongs to Close, and perhaps the most fascinating part of the proceedings is the degree to which the actress overlaps with her part (even more, in some ways, than Gloria Swanson, who actually was a star of silent cinema).  In a lyric Black and Hampton cribbed from the film, Norma sings, “We didn’t need words, we had faces,” and in a key moment in the second act the audience actually does applaud Close’s facial expression – nothing more but a twist of the neck and a widening of the eyes, but they go crazy for it.  Billy Wilder’s thesis was that fame won and lost eventually led to madness, decay, and murder.  At the end of this production, Glenn Close takes not one – not two – not three – but four curtain calls, all by herself.  Go figure.