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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 10, 2017

The picture got small

February 10, 2017 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Broadway transfer of the English National Opera revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, starring Glenn Close. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

“Sunset Boulevard,” Billy Wilder’s noir-flavored 1950 screen melodrama about a forgotten silent-movie star turned mad murderess, is back on Broadway. So is Glenn Close, who played Norma Desmond in 1994 but has mostly steered clear of the stage since then. Now that her film career is quiescent, it makes sense that she should return to Broadway in one of her most celebrated roles. The catch is the show itself is unworthy of the classic picture on which it is based.

Not so Ms. Close. To be sure, she is 69, much older than the 50-year-old character whom she plays, but that doesn’t matter in the least. If anything, her greater age makes Norma’s plight all the more pitiable, and Ms. Close’s performance, by turns adamantine and childishly needy, is as memorable in its own way as was that of Gloria Swanson in the movie. No, the fundamental problem with turning “Sunset Boulevard” into a musical is that it was already perfect, a fact that is well understood by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, whose book is largely faithful to the Wilder-Charles Brackett script…

Mr. Webber, however, decided that his kind-of-sort-of-classical style was equal to the task. So did the English National Opera, where this revival, directed by Lonny Price, originated. It is not, however, a full-scale blowout but a scaled-down, semi-staged production of the kind in which Mr. Price specializes.

The directorial conceit of the revival is that the action takes place in the mind of Joe Gillis (played here by Michael Xavier), the failed screenwriter turned kept man who narrates “Sunset Boulevard.” To this end, it is played out on a stylized Hollywood soundstage and accompanied by a 40-piece onstage orchestra. That’s a smart idea in theory, but the placement of the orchestra makes the playing area so shallow that the show looks cluttered….

More to the point, “Sunset Boulevard” needs to be mounted on an operatic scale in order to be effective. Shorn of the blank-check spectacle of Trevor Nunn’s original production, it has nothing to offer but its gooey score, which softens and sentimentalizes Wilder’s brutal satire of golden-age Hollywood and its callous ways….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

The finale of the original 1994 Broadway production of Sunset Boulevard, starring Glenn Close and directed by Trevor Nunn:

The final scene of Sunset Boulevard, starring Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim and narrated by William Holden:

Replay: Benno Moiseiwitsch plays Schumann’s “Träumerei”

February 10, 2017 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERABenno Moiseiwitsch plays Schumann’s “Träumerei” (from Kinderscenen) on the BBC in 1954:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: Antoine de Saint Exupéry on perfection and simplicity

February 10, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.”

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars (trans. Lewis Galantière)

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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