Sunset Blvd: The Album (The Other Songs).
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
When you think of all the things the eagerly-awaited, groundbreaking Sunset Blvd cast album doesn’t have, it’s remarkable that it is as thrilling as it is.
The visual theatrical coup of Tom Francis as Hollywood scriptwriter Joe Gillis, Norma Desmond’s kept man, rushing through the labyrinthine corridors and dressing rooms of the Savoy Theatre on to The Strand mingling with startled shoppers on his way back through the foyer to the stage, all the while singing the title song, obviously can’t be repeated, nor can the cinematic video wizardry of Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom, nor the electric choreography of Fabian Aloise, nor the shattering images of the gory blood-letting at the end.
What remains, however, is much more than a trawl through the famed Lloyd Webber score and Don Black/Christopher Hampton lyrics and it’s a triumph. Director Jamie Lloyd’s vision has lifted a musical once regarded as a two-trick pony, Nicole Scherzinger’s standing ovation numbers ‘With One Look’ and ‘As If We Never Said Goodbye’, to the realms of seductive masterpiece, sitting alongside Evita and The Phantom Of The Opera among the noble lord’s greatest creations.
The dancing woodwind enhancing the Scherzinger vocals in the early verses of ‘As If’ building up to that unforgettable power-packed climax is captured in all its raw, ravishing glory by the full orchestra brilliantly led by music supervisor and director Alan Williams. Big props too to sound designer Adam Fisher in a show that won seven Oliviers and took musical theatre to places never visited before.
Scherzinger of course is stunning, but in opening the show out, Francis, David Thaxton as Norma’s infatuated ex-husband, ex-director now-butler/manager Max Von Mayerling, and debutante Grace Hodgett Young as Betty Schaefer all have their moments.
‘The Greatest Star of All’ has huge impact and Thaxton does it full justice while Hodgett Young’s infectious ‘Too Much in Love to Care’ lightens the gloom cast by the delusional Norma, once a silent-screen icon but now cast aside as the talkies take over. The duets with Norma and Joe, ‘New Ways to Dream’ and ‘The Perfect Year’, are vintage Lloyd Webber too. No two-trick ponies on this Boulevard!
Now settled into an enraptured Broadway with Francis swapping The Strand for 44th Street for his late-evening wander, this recording was made live at the Savoy with no enhancements, exactly as it was heard in the theatre. As Lloyd Webber says: “It perfectly captures one of the finest and most exciting reinventions of Sunset Boulevard. The production of this album makes it a true musical radio play, harking back to where it all began for me with the first Jesus Christ Superstar album.”
This is a glorious album to have and I am already dropping hints to various children and grandchildren looking for a suitable birthday present for this Boulevard fan.
Jeremy Chapman
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