‘Sunset Boulevard’ star Nicole Scherzinger is coming for that Tony Award
Nicole Scherzinger has brought her Olivier-winning performance in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard” to Broadway. And rave reviews for her performance as the silent movie queen Norma Desmond staging a comeback could well win her a Tony Award next June. While some reviewers expressed reservations about the overall effect of Jamie Lloyd‘s restaging of this 1995 Best Musical Tony champ, they all heaped praise on its leading lady. Scroll down for just a sampling of these notices.
The original edition of “Sunset Boulevard” dominated the 1995 Tonys, taking home a lucky seven trophies. This radical remounting replicated that haul at the recent Olivier Awards. It was that success which propelled this production across the pond.
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This revival looks vastly different than the original, which painstakingly recreated the 1950 Oscar-winning film. Its bare set and minimal costumes aren’t likely to register with the Tony Awards nominating committee. However Jack Knowles and Adam Fisher, who won Oliviers for their lighting and sound designs respectively, should reap Tony bids. But Lloyd, who contended at the Tonys for his helming of revivals of the plays “Betrayal” (2020) and “A Doll’s House” (2023), may find it harder to break into the musical direction race.
Naveen Kumar (Washington Post) observes, “Scherzinger, who moves with the steely grace of an exacting ballet mistress, is almost absurdly glamorous. She has the rare, unflinching magnetism of an exotic bird and commands the spotlight with bone-chilling intensity.”
Patrick Ryan (USA Today) notes: “Scherzinger hauntingly conveys Norma’s fear, fragility and longing as she stares down the barrel of her life. That Scherzinger’s performance is so affecting is a credit to her formidable stage presence, given that Lloyd’s muddled concept for the revival is occasionally at odds with the source material.”
Daniel D’Addario (Variety) opines: “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.” And, he noted, “It’s among the most remarkable aspects of Scherzinger’s performance that she creates space for Tom Francis, the appealing and gifted actor playing doomed writer Joe Gillis.”
Johnny Oleksinski (New York Post) declares: “The entire production leaves you breathless. Adrenaline pumps through our bloodstream anytime the extraordinary Nicole Scherzinger, making her wondrous Broadway debut, wails a note. She’s otherworldly as that reclusive has-been Norma.”
Jesse Green (New York Times) expressed overall disappointment but did praise Scherzinger’s “exciting yet exceptionally weird and counterintuitive performance.” He thought, “this is a stripped-down Norma, which you might well argue is no Norma at all. Yet the characterization is also intensely baroque, more demented even than Glenn Close’s in the original production and the 2017 revival.”
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