Nicole Scherzinger dazzles as Norma Desmond in a modern, stripped-down production of Sunset Blvd. on Broadway.
OUR recent trip to the US made me watch a classic musical which we were made aware of since our younger years. Our early exposure to it was the film version which was a tragic and cautionary tale of an industry we never thought we would be part of in the future.
Catching the preview of “Sunset Blvd” was an absolute thrill. We were walking through the streets of New York while humming these lines in our head – “I don’t know why I’m frightened, I know my way around here …” and were so excited to catch the onetime pop star Nicole Scherzinger of Pussycat Dolls as she makes her astonishing Broadway debut as the faded film siren Norma Desmond. It is particularly interesting that Nicole is one of us. She grew up in Honolulu Hawaii and her dad Alfonso Valiente is of Filipino descent and Rosemary, her mother, is a Native Hawaiian and Ukrainian.
Entering the St. James theater, we were faced with a bare set, just a silver curtain (like the silver screen, and for us Pinoys, our “pinilakang tabing”). No grand living room set up, no staircase, and when Nicole ascends (as the modern-day Norma Desmond), she just wore a sexy black dress all throughout the play, no gold drapes and that signature turban that we know from our youth.
Production notes reinforced this modern- Gen Z reinterpretation. Steadicams thrust into the faces of the leads project their expressions, and the one twitch and sweat on their brows, on a massive screen behind them. (This includes the extended opening to Act II, in which the company enters the theater after marching, on-camera, through Shubert Alley.) The Washington Post notes, “group dance numbers choreographed by Fabian Aloise become a rollicking, violent spectacle; lighting designer Jack Knowles manipulates our sense of reality by alternating between glaring, obliterating spotlights and inky darkness. And Norma is haunted by a wordless, agile younger version of herself (Hannah Yun Chamberlain); her image in celluloid stalks the stage, rendered in physical space in terms that recall this year’s body-double freakout flick ‘The Substance’.”
Add to this, as Norma sings the final verse of “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” one of two show-stopping numbers that bolster the musical “Sunset Blvd,” Nicole turns her face skyward. Her architectural cheekbones reflect the glare of the spotlight, and her eyes disappear as she contorts her features into a mask of perverse pleasure. She — both the actress and the character she plays, the has-been screen legend Norma Desmond — seems, for a moment, to be inhaling not oxygen but motes of light.
Variety praises Schezinger’s performance: “Scherzinger’s performance as a fallen idol desperate to reclaim her fame is many things, among them a coming-out party for a performer whose plainly evident raw talent has long outstripped her ability to find a landing place in the entertainment industry. (Audience members will likely recall her from her role as the lead singer of the now-defunct girl group Pussycat Dolls or from her work as a reality-show judge.) It is also a capital-E Event, a thrill ride whose greatest pleasure may be that, under the direction of Jamie Lloyd, Scherzinger’s work exists within a production as bold as she is. Norma Desmond’s problem, as she tells us upon her entrance, is that she is big, but the pictures have gotten small. No such problem here. Scherzinger and the stage she inhabits push each other to grand extremes. The result is something like magic.”
It feels as if this role was meant for both Norma and Scherzinger, transporting us into Norma’s mind and allowing us to finally see her as she sees herself.
“Washington Post” further lauds her performance, saying, “Nicole Scherzinger’s radiance as Norma Desmond in ‘Sunset Blvd’ is difficult to overstate. She sings ‘As If We Never Said Goodbye,’ an aching, one-sided duet with fame, with such delicacy and gut-slugging power that even Barbra Streisand, who covered it the same year the musical debuted on Broadway in 1994, might consider retiring the song from her repertoire.”
Ouch!
Credit goes to director Jamie Lloyd for his brilliant work in capturing attention, simplifying visuals to bare bones, and skillfully leveraging the audience’s “nose-to-screen” instinct. When the lens zooms in, the story unfolds in microexpressions, every pore and imperfection (few though there are) magnified to remarkable effect. This technique particularly highlights Norma’s manservant, Max, whom David Thaxton portrays with a guard dog’s snarl and operatic bravado.
This made us so proud of Nicole, because at 49, she is the modern-day Norma Desmond of this “Sunset Blvd.” Her vocals and movements are impressive; her emotions are magnified on screen! To add to that, unlike some theater actors who think that greeting their fans at the stage door is not their obligation as it is not part of the ticket price, Nicole was welcoming and gracious. We, along with other Broadway fans, including a few fellow Pinoys, got to take pictures with her after the performance. She signed our playbills and posters and even gave a warm message to her Filipino supporters, saying, “Mabuhay! Salamat po!” with genuine kindness.
Although this Broadway season is filled with outstanding performances by actresses in musicals — including Audra McDonald in “Gypsy,” Katie Brayben in “The Story of Tammy Faye,” Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard in “Death Becomes Her,” Idina Menzel in “Redwood,” and other leads in “Betty Boop The Musical” and “Buena Vista Social Club” — we’ll be rooting for the kind-hearted Nicole to take home the Tony, replicating her Best Actress win at the Olivier Awards in London!
