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    Backstage With ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and 3 Other Broadway Shows

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    Broadway stars make it look easy — hitting a high C, crying on demand, landing a complex turn with taps, doing all that as many as eight times a week. But behind the curtain, before a show, the groundwork is laid: the vocal cord steaming, the fight calls to ensure violent scenes can be staged safely, the visits and hugs and affirmations that put actors in the right frames of mind. We watched the preparations for four Tony-nominated shows — “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “John Proctor Is the Villain” and “Oh, Mary!” — as their performers got ready to go onstage.‘Buena Vista Social Club’Photographed by More

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      In ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ Tom Francis Writes His Own Story

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      Tom Francis asked to meet on a rugged corner of the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. It was a bright April day, and in some ways Francis, 25, in a vintage sweater and slacks, looked like any other member of the creative class with a matcha habit. Still, I had picked him out a block away.Onstage, in Jamie Lloyd’s coruscating Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard,” his brooding features projected onto a 23-foot-tall screen, Francis looms large. But even here on Roebling Street, the actor, who stands 6-foot-2, with shoulders that would not demean a musk ox, was not exactly small. Francis is nominated for a Tony Award, and to see him pictured alongside his fellow nominees in the leading actor in a musical category is to believe that he could take any of them in a bar fight, maybe more than one at once.His “Sunset Boulevard” co-star Nicole Scherzinger described him succinctly. “He is a man,” she said in a phone interview. But, she was quick to emphasize, Francis is also a sweetheart, “a 25-year-old teddy bear.”In “Sunset Boulevard,” Francis stars as Joe Gillis, a dead-behind-the-eyes screenwriter who becomes entangled, in an asphyxiating way, with an aging queen of the silents. Here is the New York Times critic Jesse Green’s take: “Francis, as Joe, does shutdown-cynical-corpse very well.” Yet in person, Francis, who wields those shoulders lightly, is boyish, candid, eager, almost unable to believe his good fortune.Tom Francis last month in Manhattan. “I just knew in an instant that was Joe Gillis,” Jamie Lloyd, the director of “Sunset Boulevard,” said. “He wasn’t in any way glossy.”Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesAnd yes, that good fortune requires him to remain onstage for nearly every moment of a two-and-a-half-hour mega musical, except when he is leading the cast — in wind, in rain, amid tourists — through a portion of the Theater District as he sings the title number outdoors. He ends the show in his underwear, sunken-eyed and covered in blood.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After ‘Sunset Boulevard’ Malfunction, Nicole Scherzinger Sings With Bullhorn

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      The “Sunset Boulevard” star briefly entertained the crowd when “a technical malfunction on the sound side” forced the cancellation of a matinee performance.In one of those moments that is likely to become Broadway lore, the actress Nicole Scherzinger grabbed a bullhorn to sing “With One Look” from “Sunset Boulevard” when the sound system failed on Wednesday afternoon at the St. James Theater.The packed matinee crowd had settled into the seats and was awaiting the start of the performance, which had been delayed for unspecified technical reasons. When it became clear backstage that the issues could not be resolved, Scherzinger, the show’s much-praised star, was not going to send the fans home empty-handed.So Scherzinger, a former Pussycat Doll, grabbed a bullhorn, and took the stage to sing one of the show’s best-known songs.“When it became apparent they couldn’t do the show, it was her idea to go out and speak to the audience, so she and Tom Francis came out,” said Rick Miramontez, a spokesman for the show, referring also to one of Scherzinger’s co-stars. “She asked stage management for a bullhorn, and she gave them a performance of one of the show’s biggest numbers.”The show was then canceled, and audience members were given a letter offering them a refund.“It was very disappointing, because we booked this a long time ago,” said Emily Feurring, a nutritionist who was in the audience, “but it was also kind of exciting because it was a New York moment, and no one else will ever get that.”“It was very sweet in a way,” she added. “And we live here, so we’ll get to go again.”Miramontez called the problem “a technical malfunction on the sound side,” and said the show’s producers were hopeful, but not certain, that the Wednesday evening performance would proceed as scheduled.The moment is reminiscent of others in which Broadway stars have vamped for audiences when technical issues have forced delays or cancellations to shows, many of which are dependent on electricity not only for voice amplification but also for automated set pieces, projections and building safety.On Tuesday, Darren Criss, Helen J Shen and Dez Duron, three of the lead performers in the musical “Maybe Happy Ending” entertained the crowd with songs when a medical emergency in the audience forced a lengthy pause in that show.And earlier this year, at the first preview of the new musical “Redwood,” a mid-show delay was caused by an issue with the set’s LED screens. Idina Menzel, the star, spent the time fielding questions from the audience, which was filled with fans looking for stories about her experiences performing in “Wicked” and “Rent” and as a voice actor in the “Frozen” films.But these incidents go way back — in Atlanta in the late 1990s, an early performance of the Disney musical that became “Aida” had to be stopped because of a technical problem, and the cast did the rest of the show concert-style. More

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      9 Best Theater Moments of 2024

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      “The Outsiders,” “Sunset Boulevard” and “Ragtime” were among the productions with stage moments that stood out this year.Climate protesters disrupting a performance of “An Enemy of the People,” the outdoor walking scene in “Sunset Boulevard” and the giggles prompted by a character’s reaction to a hunky celebrity’s glutes in “Hold On to Me Darling”: The rewards of live theater were aplenty this year. Here, nine other stage moments that especially stood out, listed chronologically. NICOLE HERRINGTONExpert FloppingSutton Foster does some playful mugging in “Once Upon a Mattress.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSutton Foster’s performance as the unorthodox Princess Winnifred in “Once Upon a Mattress” was full of playful mugging. But it was in the show’s indelible scene that her best physical comedy shone through: sprawling atop a tower of mattresses stacked on a pea, flailing, flopping, hopping and then propped, rear-end up, like a fitful child protesting bedtime. It’s the kind of clowning that few can pull off with Foster’s ease and charm. MAYA PHILLIPSCoroner’s Cabaret ActAndrew Durand, left, and Thom Sesma in the musical “Dead Outlaw.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe beguilingly strange new Off Broadway musical “Dead Outlaw” retold the true tale of an Old West bank robber whose mummified corpse landed, in 1976, on the Los Angeles autopsy table of Thomas Noguchi, coroner to the stars. Noguchi is this dark comedy’s conscience — and in Thom Sesma’s performance, a fabulous showman, too. Grabbing the dangling microphone intended for postmortem notes, he delivered a slab-side nightclub number, boasting of celebrities he had cut up. Suddenly, surreally, death was a cabaret. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESVirtuosic ViolenceA balletic rumble in “The Outsiders” is stagecraft at its best. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ One Look Wasn’t Enough

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      A bare-bones revival of the Broadway musical grew on me with subsequent viewings, and the additional details I noticed bolstered my reporting.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Something I wish I had the chance to do more often as a reporter is to see shows multiple times, deeper into their runs — the “Notre Dame de Paris” musical, which I’ve seen seven times, and “The Phantom of the Opera,” which I’ve seen six times, come to mind.The first time I saw “Sunset Boulevard” in London last year, I was, to say the least, underwhelmed. Directed by Jamie Lloyd, the British minimalist, the revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical had no sets, all-black costumes and almost no props.I had seen neither the original 1993 musical, nor the 1950 black-and-white Billy Wilder film on which it is based. This is not an approach I would recommend for a Jamie Lloyd show; the experience was akin to watching a gender-swapped Shakespeare production with no concept of the original.But one thing did grab me: The outrageously ambitious title number, which is filmed live every night. In a six-minute sequence that begins backstage before spilling out onto the street, the screenwriter Joe Gillis (played by Tom Francis) contemplates the circumstances that led to him becoming the plaything of Norma Desmond (Nicole Scherzinger).“There’s no way that’s live,” someone sitting next to me said, as the audience watched the street sequence unfold on a towering screen at the front of the stage.But the actor had grabbed an umbrella as he headed outside — it was raining that night in London, as it often does — which seemed to give it all away.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      6 Minutes. 62 People. 1 Epic ‘Sunset Boulevard’ Sequence.

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      A group of young men and women, all dressed in black, marches down a busy street in the heart of Times Square. Walking in formation, they dodge parked cars, bicycles and pedestrians, as the man leading them belts out a song.“Sunset Boulevard, ruthless boulevard / Destination for the stony-hearted.”This ambitious scene from the director Jamie Lloyd’s Broadway revival of “Sunset Boulevard” hinges on a live tracking sequence that goes backstage and spills onto West 44th Street. It’s shown in real time on a massive LCD screen to the audience inside the St. James Theater, but passers-by — both unsuspecting and calculating — get a front-row view, at least during the number’s three-minute outdoor portion.“We’re sort of crossing our fingers a bit every night,” said Nathan Amzi, who designed the scene with Joe Ransom and Lloyd. Everyone, he added, “has to have laser focus to make it work.”Through rain, bone-chilling temperatures and the crush of crowds from neighboring shows, this scene, which takes 62 people to pull off, goes on.The title song, “Sunset Boulevard,” which is sung by the hapless young screenwriter Joe Gillis (played by Tom Francis), functions as a sort of dream sequence in the musical. The character contemplates the circumstances that led him to take up residence at a Los Angeles mansion as the boy toy of the faded silent film star Norma Desmond — and tries to justify them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jeff Bezos and Jessica Chastain Toast a Daring ‘Sunset Boulevard’ on Broadway

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      Outside the St. James Theater on Sunday night, curious onlookers joined a throng of photographers as, amid a sea of flash bulbs, stars descended on a black carpet for the opening night of a buzzy new revival of the classic musical “Sunset Boulevard.”“I’m thrilled to see this,” said Betty Buckley, 77, who played the role of the faded silent-film star Norma Desmond in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in London and on Broadway in the 1990s.The show, which tells the story of Ms. Desmond’s descent into madness as she is forced to come to grips with an industry that discards its female stars at an ever-earlier age, stars the 46-year-old Nicole Scherzinger, a former Pussycat Doll, in the role.The new production, helmed by the minimalist director Jamie Lloyd, who also directed a London run last year, is in many ways a daring update of the original musical, which opened in the West End in 1993.The show’s director, Jamie Lloyd, with its choreographer, Fabian Aloise, at the after-party.Tom Francis, who plays the young screenwriter Joe Gillis, received a standing ovation for a sequence in which he sings the show’s title number as he is followed onto the street by a live feed.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJessica Chastain was nominated for a Tony Award last year for starring in Mr. Lloyd’s previous Broadway production, a revival of “A Doll’s House.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ Nicole Scherzinger Is 23 Feet Tall

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      A fascinating Broadway revival of the bombastic 1994 musical blows it up even further.Despite Norma Desmond, who famously declares in the film “Sunset Boulevard” that it’s not her but “the pictures that got small,” the opposite is true on Broadway these days. In musicals especially, video and projections have grown ever more dominant. Perhaps it is not so much an irony as an inevitability, then, that at the St. James Theater, where a revival of the musical based on “Sunset Boulevard” opened on Sunday, the pictures — live video streamed onto an LCD screen more than 23 feet tall — are so big they almost blot out the show below.But alas, only almost.For despite many fascinating interventions by the director Jamie Lloyd and his technical team, and the fact that it is based on one of the greatest of movies, the musical remains too silly for words. In that sense, and others, Norma would have loved it.Which isn’t praise. You will recall that Norma (Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls) is deluded: a washed-up silent film star who, in her 50-ish dotage, haunts a grand, ghostly Los Angeles mansion with only her grim manservant and a recently dead chimpanzee for company. By 1949, when the musical starts, she has barely left the premises for decades, let alone made a movie; still, she believes that she, and the silents, could achieve a marvelous comeback if only Cecil B. DeMille would direct her in the epic version of “Salome” she has written.The rest is madness. She conscripts Joe Gillis, a hunky, seedy, unsuccessful screenwriter, to polish her draft and, soon enough, other things. Joe (Tom Francis) seesaws between his luxurious life as Norma’s kept man and the more idealistic promptings of Betty Schaefer, an ambitious studio underling he at first brushes off as “one of the message kids.” Still, when Betty (Grace Hodgett Young) urges Joe to adapt a story of his called “Dark Windows,” they fall in love, while the servant, Max von Mayerling (David Thaxton), offers a dark window of his own into Norma’s modus operandi with men. (Razor and gun included.) None of this ends well, or rather it does not begin well, as the tale is narrated postmortem by Joe’s corpse.The 1950 film, directed by Billy Wilder, stands at a wry remove from these tawdry proceedings, with a cool appreciation but no embrace for human pathos and the hysteria of Hollywood dreams. Norma is a drama queen, Joe a gigolo, Betty a simp and Max a goblin. We know nothing of their emotions beyond what their actions show us.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Yesterday’s Broadway Warhorses, Saddled With Today’s Concerns

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      Revivals of “Romeo and Juliet,” “Our Town,” “Gypsy” and “Sunset Boulevard” aim to show that rethinking for the present is what makes classics classic.Two cheers for new voices! Of the 16 productions scheduled to open on Broadway between now and the end of the year, 12 are new to the Boulevard of Broken Budgets.But I’d like to reserve a third cheer for the fall’s four revivals, which may get less attention, having been this way before, but are likely to earn their keep if history holds true. Old voices are, after all, where new voices come from. And though 240 years separate the Broadway debuts of “Romeo and Juliet” and “Sunset Boulevard,” with “Our Town” and “Gypsy” in between, they all have much in common, at least in their continued haunting of theatergoers’ imaginations.That haunting arises, in part, from our memories of past stars who hover alongside the new ones. In “Our Town,” Henry Fonda and Paul Newman will be whispering the Stage Manager’s lines to Jim Parsons. Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury and Patti LuPone will no doubt watch over Audra McDonald as she takes on the role of Rose in “Gypsy.” LuPone will also be looking over Nicole Scherzinger’s shoulder in “Sunset Boulevard”; presumably keeping a safe distance, so will Glenn Close. And though few are likely to remember Robert Goffe, the original Juliet, he too will be felt on Broadway this fall. However long ago, the part was built on him.But revivals of shows like these have more to offer than ghosts. There’s a reason, aside from name recognition, that they keep coming back. Though products of vastly different times and cultures, they dig so deep into their specific truths that they reach a common, eternal one, from which many others may spring.Perhaps that’s most evident in “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play about two families whose ordinary life events, from birth to death, are consecrated by a kind of communal love. The director Kenny Leon said that in his production, “1936 runs into 2024,” allowing the story to serve “as a metaphor for our world, for our country, even our time.”Paul Newman in a 2002 production of “Our Town.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHenry Fonda in a 1969 production of “Our Town.”Everett CollectionWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More