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Much is unrecognizable about the Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard” at the St. James Theatre.
The Norma Desmond is a former pop star, Nicole Scherzinger, the scenery has been swapped for a crisp giant screen and the costumes are a glossy black.
But “Sunset” aficionados will also hear a difference: An entire song 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 told The Post during 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 number that’s been in the show for more than 30 years is a fast-moving, upbeat ditty in which fading Hollywood actress Norma buys struggling young screenwriter Joe Gillis (Tom Francis in the revival) fancy new suits for his birthday.
It has bouncy and not-so-subtle lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton such as “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 jive with Lloyd’s especially dark take on the material, which premiered in 2023 at the Savoy Theatre in London. At times, his jolting revival borders on horror.
A culling was in order.
“He was less sure about the beautician scene,” added Lloyd Webber, 77. “But I said, ‘If you want to get rid of ‘The Lady’s Paying,’ you’ve got to get rid of both, because they’re basically the same melody, and one is a reworking of the other, so it wouldn’t work, you know? And so both 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 also came to the conclusion that it’s difficult to include 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 said.
Far from agonizing over one of his compositions being cut, Lloyd Webber enjoyed tinkering with his 32-year-old show.
“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 said.
“And I started playing around with harmonies and things that I don’t normally get the opportunity to do.”
The result is a revival that, its creator said is “darker and, I think, it’s also deeper.”
And it confirms Lloyd Webber’s belief as to the secret sauce of a thrilling production: a talented group of artists that really click.
“I find [Jamie] a fascinating collaborator,” he said. “When musicals really work, you’ve got to have a real collaboration with the director and the creative team.”
English (US)