Kathryn VanArendonk

Lloyd’s revival proves we don’t need a live rendering of Norma Desmond’s gaudy wardrobe, or a large spiral staircase for her to traipse down. He gives us all the pieces to make new meaning of Webber’s classic musical, and asks us to take up the challenge. As Sunset’s aspiring screenwriter Betty Schafer (Grace Hodgett Young) sings directly to the house, breaking the fourth wall, “Audiences are smarter, smarter than you think.”

He swims. He writes in his journal. He worries. He performs a show that's about swimming and making people laugh about bodies, but it's mostly about our need to laugh about death. And it's beautiful: exquisitely written, performed and designed, with all of Birbiglia's characteristic ear for tone and rhythm. The backdrop behind him, hung deliberately askew, becomes a slide, a medical display, a gurney, and the watery, tiled bottom of a pool. All anecdotes and metaphors click neatly into one another; all the stories build and coalesce and flow from one event to the next.