A lot is unrecognizable concerning the Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Blvd.” on the St. James Theatre.
The Norma Desmond is a former pop star, Nicole Scherzinger, the surroundings has been swapped for a crisp big display screen and the costumes are a shiny black.
However “Sunset” aficionados can even hear a distinction: A complete track has been scrapped: “The Lady’s Paying.”
“I get on really well with Jamie [Lloyd, the director], and he wanted to make some quite radical changes to the score,” Lloyd Webber solely advised The Publish throughout a sit-down.
“And the main thing he wanted was to cut ‘The Lady’s Paying,’ which is the song, and the beautician scene.”
The quantity that’s been within the present for greater than 30 years is a fast-moving, upbeat ditty through which fading Hollywood actress Norma buys struggling younger screenwriter Joe Gillis (Tom Francis within the revival) fancy new fits for his birthday.
It has bouncy and not-so-subtle lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton equivalent to “Happy birthday, welcome to your shop-a-thon!” and “You’re a very lucky writer, come along now, get undressed / Unless I’m much mistaken, that’s a 42-inch chest!”
A chipper makeover didn’t jibe with Lloyd’s particularly darkish tackle the fabric, which premiered in 2023 on the Savoy Theatre in London. At occasions, his jolting revival borders on horror.
A culling was so as.
“He was less sure about the beautician scene,” added Lloyd Webber, 77. “However I mentioned, ‘If you want to get rid of ‘The Lady’s Paying,’ you’ve received to eliminate each, as a result of they’re principally the identical melody, and one is a remodeling of the opposite, so it wouldn’t work, you understand? And so each went.
“His grounds were — which are really interesting — is that they don’t further the story; that we don’t need to know that they’re going clothes shopping.”
Lloyd Webber additionally got here to the conclusion that it’s troublesome to incorporate such a diversionary detour in 2025.
“I think in a musical, particularly today, with people’s attention span being what it is, I think you’ve got to do the things that are essential to have, but consider carefully about the things which are nice to have,” he mentioned.
Removed from agonizing over certainly one of his compositions being lower, Lloyd Webber loved tinkering along with his 32-year-old present.
“Once we decided on that, we said, ‘Right, there are various areas of the show, particularly in the second act, or the transition of ‘The Lady’s Paying,’ where I wrote a completely new section of music, where we’ve got to make it darker,” he mentioned.
“And I started playing around with harmonies and things that I don’t normally get the opportunity to do.”
The result’s a revival that, its creator mentioned is “darker and, I think, it’s also deeper.”
And it confirms Lloyd Webber’s perception as to the key sauce of an exciting manufacturing: a gifted group of artists that actually click on.
“I find [Jamie] a fascinating collaborator,” he mentioned. “When musicals really work, you’ve got to have a real collaboration with the director and the creative team.”
