Sunset Blvd. (3*)

Stripped down just doesn't do it for me, especially when the subject is Hollywood glamour, no matter how faded.  Sure, there's a lot to admire about the high concept production of Sunset Blvd. that now has much of the audience at the St. James Theater jumping out of its seats, and yes, Nicole Scherzinger's pull-out-the-stops vocal performance of "As If We Never Said Goodbye" does induce goosebumps. But in the final analysis the show is "a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing." 

Or perhaps I'm just too literal.  Let's start with the casting.  As talented (and hunky) an understudy as Diego Andres Rodriguez is, he's WAAAAAAY  too young to play the sneering, seen-it-all Joe Gillis, and featured performer Tom Francis (whom I didn't see) is only 25, too.  The age (and attractiveness) difference between Rodriguez and Scherzinger, whose own youth significantly undercuts the premise of Billy Wilder's 1953 masterpiece, needs to SEEM a lot greater than it does.  And no knock to Grace Hodgett Young, who sings beautifully and delivers the only believable dramatic performance as Betty Schaefer, but she ain't no ingenue. Even if exploding convention is the point of this adaptation, Broadway's third, doesn't the story have to be SOMEWHAT believable for the audience to empathize with its disillusioned and deluded leads?  And despite the unexpected reality induced by the gimmick that opens the second act (IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING!?!?), West 44th Street is no Sunset Boulevard.

Now for the intriguing concept rigorously executed under PERFECT lighting in which a couple of chairs are the ONLY props, and the ONLY costume changes occur on stage (SELDOMLY):  silent films, Norma Desmond's comfort zone, WERE black and white and over-emoting WAS the thing.  But the former gets old pretty quickly and the latter, especially when blown up to movie screen-size close-ups on an otherwise bare stage (making the microphones look as big as drones), evokes ridicule, not pathos.  Director Jaime Lloyd, who's not shy about promoting his Svengali role, also wants it both ways, with a blood-red Grand Guignol finale that recalls the prom scene in Carrie, minus the heartbreak.  

We gave the world/New ways to dream/Somehow we found/New ways to dream sings Norma, more than once, about the birth of the movies.  Call me old-fashioned, but Lloyd is more successful in conjuring nightmares which, in our current political climate, makes his show more resonant than entertaining for people who prefer traditional musicals.