Nicole Scherzinger Photo by Marc Brenner

Which doesn't mean it isn't fascinating to watch, sort of like dropping acid and then watching a cobra dancing with a snake charmer. Just don't get too close.

And speaking of close, remember Glenn Close who portrayed has-been film star Norma Desmond on Broadway in 1994 and again in 2017? Well, good. Now forget all about it. Cuz you ain't seen nothing until you see Nicole Scherzinger sink her fangs into the role. If Close gave us a Norma who slides from deeply eccentric to certifiably insane over the course of the evening, Scherzinger starts out off the deep end and goes full-blown Carrie before the night is over.

Whatever else, Scherzinger certainly knows how to entertain a live audience. When we first encounter her, she slowly appears out of the ever-present fog that generally serves as the set design for the entire production. She is barefoot, wearing a clingy black slip and a pair of sunglasses. Confidence incarnate, she knows exactly how to grab us by the throats, like a feral cat, skills no doubt learned during her long stint as lead singer of the highly successful R&B/pop group The Pussycat Dolls from 2003-2010.

When she removes those shades and steps downstage to greet her eager fans, she sings "With One Look" like it's never been sung before. Not only can she shatter glass (and sensitive eardrums) with her voice, but she has an uncanny ability to reach out deeply into the audience from the very edge of the stage, sort of the way King Kong did when he appeared on Broadway in 2013. And her rendition in the second act of "As If We Never Said Goodbye" is vocally reminiscent of Barbra Streisand, if rather more over-the-top. She is, as well, quite a dancer, someone who will do a split in the middle of a number as if it were a perfectly normal way of moving across the stage. Betcha Glenn Close never did that.

The audience goes mad with adoring and sustained applause, of course, and that's all lovely and may even help sell tickets. But neither Sunset Boulevard nor Sunset Blvd. is a concert (even though it is mostly sung-through). There are those bits (aka "the plot") in which we are expected to believe that Norma is a real person rather than a diva in some avant-garde opera. And that's where things fall into the brambles. Sometimes Norma comes across as if she were a vampire, as opposed to an aging vamp (in this she is aided and abetted by David Thaxton as Max, Norma's former husband, current servant, and Svengali). At other times it seems like intentional mugging is taking the place of acting the role, a view which visually is enormously exaggerated via Jamie Lloyd's current favorite plaything, the omnipresent video camera, which, as much as any of the cast members, vies for star billing.

Tom Francis and Cast Photo by Marc Brenner

Lloyd certainly knows how to direct for the stage, and quite well as he has demonstrated in his two most recent Broadway efforts: stripped-down productions of Betrayal in 2019 and A Doll's House in 2023. The staging here is interesting and effective, thanks to Soutra Gilmour's black and white costumes (to match the black and white video technique) and heavy use of atmospheric fog to give everything a dreamlike/nightmarish quality. Lighting designer Jack Knowles' use of deep shadows complements the mood of the production.

But the video stuff and Nicole Scherzinger's ferocious singing make this incarnation of Sunset Boulevard little more than a high-concept version of smoke and mirrors. (The smoke is obvious, the "mirrors" are provided by Hannah Yun Chamberlain, who silently dances as "Young Norma," reflecting Norma's locked-in image of herself at the height of her fame). Choreographer Fabian Aloise layers in an interestingly varied range of dance moves for the ensemble to perform, becoming more frenetic as the overall tone descends into madness.

There is one exception to the strangeness of this production. It sits with the performance of Grace Hodgett Young as Betty, the script reader who falls for Joe. She plays it straight up, and her singing of "Too Much in Love to Care" in duet with Tom Francis is not only lovely, but a breath of fresh air in this highly overwrought extravaganza.