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Theater Review: This Sunset Boulevard Is Facedown in the Pool
4 / 10
But Sunset Boulevard, which opened tonight in a train wreck of a revival starring a woeful Glenn Close, also comes with a poison pill for would-be adapters. Its daring mix of film noir and Hollywood satire requires the utmost finesse to carry off, lest it turn into camp, a mere coffin of curiosities. (We are in fact introduced to Norma as she kisses the corpse of her pet chimp.) That it doesn't go rancid - that the film remains beautiful despite its overbite - is attributable to Wilder's worldliness: No extreme of human behavior surprises or discomfits him. It may be impossible to achieve that kind of detachment in theatrical song, which pretty much defies a neutral point of view. Perhaps that's why Kander and Ebb gave up. As for Sondheim, who was writing with Jeanette MacDonald in mind for the lead, he dropped the project after Wilder told him at a cocktail party that the material could only work as an opera.
