Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.
Twenty-two years ago, Glenn Close won the best actress Tony Award as silent screen star Norma Desmond. She’s back and better. That’s pretty much all you need to know about this pared down production which comes to us from a successful run in London. The piece itself was never substantial. Unlike Hello Dolly or Gypsy repeated year after year as actresses yearn to execute star turns, both music (Andrew Lloyd Webber) and lyrics (Don Black/Christopher Hampton) here are pedestrian. It should be noted, however, that songs will probably never sound better as performed by a 40! piece orchestra and engineered by Sound Designer Mick Potter.
Glenn Close, Michael Xavier
Transitioning from Billy Wilder’s 1950 film, Sunset Boulevard also lost the pith of the noir aura which, in its initial form, was as morbid as Nathanael West’s 1939 The Day of the Locust. Whereas William Holden’s young screenwriter Joe Gillis was already bitter and cynical, musical theater actors have played him increasingly more innocent and/or compassionate.
The line culminates in Michael Xavier’s portrayal. A good singer and actor (not to mention eye candy), Xavier is made to sympathize with Gillis’s benefactor to such a degree, we lose the repulsion and self loathing, mercenary attitude prevalent in the original. The former is completely defanged by referring to Norma as 50 years old when, in fact, she’s supposed to be 40-50 years his senior. (Kisses should elicit shudders and don’t.) The latter appears as an afterthought. I lay these issues at the feet of Director Lonny Price, though Close may have demanded the age change.
The Company at Schwab’s
With the show’s orchestra taking up most of a sizable stage, Lonny Price must shift his characters around and above with both visual adroitness and attention to story location. He does so. An overlong party scene of youthful movie hopefuls is graphically upbeat, aided and abetted by Choreographer Stephen Mear’s exuberant moves.
For those of you living under a rock, the synopsis: chased by collectors who will shortly repossess his car, Gillis accidentally wanders onto the grounds of once celebrated, silent screen star Norma Desmond. With the conniving and protection of butler Max von Mayerling (Fred Johanson, who seems more like a cardboard Munster than an ominous obsessive), the former toast of Hollywood lives in a gilded fantasy of return to her public.
Michael Xavier, Siobhan Dillon
When Gillis learns Norma’s written a massive script in which she expects to play 16 year-old Salome, he signs on to doctor it and shortly ends up living on premises, coddled, gifted, owned. An inadvertent side romance with attractive wannabe writer, Betty Schaeffer (the very fine, fresh, and credible Siobhan Dillon) comes to naught as Norma finds out and takes violent action.
The role of proud, desperate, unbalanced Norma is less camp than frequent embodiment in Glenn Close’s well practiced hands. Older and perhaps more understanding of the diva’s emotions, Close gives us a terrified woman fighting for life as she knows it. She’s persuasively obtuse, imperious, raging, joyful – oh, the expression on her face watching Norma’s film or dancing with Ellis!, and mentally unmoored. Though vocals can be thin or off key, the performer never loses focus or verisimilitude. The audience, having raised Close to a pantheon of appreciated survivors, greets every big number with extensive applause. Three separate bows evoke cheers and stomping.
Glenn Close
James Noone’s imaginative set utilizes metalwork scaffolding, balconies and stairs to great effect, though performers get a taxing workout. A vertical daisy chain of chandeliers is marvelous as is a floating cadaver. To my mind, the Schwab’s (Drugstore) sign is way too small to allot significance. Mark Henderson’s Lighting Design offers far more nuance than mere gridwork might inspire.
Tracy Christensen does an able job with Costumes which live visually well together and appear period apt. Anthony Powell’s Costume Design for Glenn Close is both wonderfully over the top and flattering without seeming high camp – until the last scene when dressing for an early film purposefully reflects madness. Charlotte Hayward has alas toned down Norma’s exaggerated Make-up.
Photos by Joan Marcus Opening: Glenn Close
Glenn Close inSunset Boulevard
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Book & Lyrics by Don Black & Christopher Hampton
Directed by Lonny Price
Palace Theatre
47th and Broadway
The original Royal Shakespeare/Broadway production of this piece with Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan was electric. From the moment Le Vicomte de Valmont (Liev Schreiber here) slithered into proximity of La Marquise de Merteuil (Janet McTeer in this production) the stage crackled with wit, innuendo, and sexual anticipation. While outwardly meticulously proper, the Machiavellian power game played with others’ lives (and their own) is not just selfish and cruel, it’s rooted as firmly below the waist as it is in intellectual satisfaction.
There’s no denying both leads are excellent actors. The mercurial McTeer was far and away the best thing about this summer’s Taming of the Shrew in Central Park and Schreiber’s cable show Donovan has been well received, but the pair seems miscast, she uncomfortable and he lost in translation. Had this Marquise been coupled with as strong a force of nature as herself, things might’ve gone very differently. (London reviews with another Valmont were raves.)
Janet McTeer
Schreiber is stiff and brutish in a role that requires lascivious finesse. When calculation is apparent it’s rarely magnetic. A sword fight, however, is terrific, and its consequences well played. While McTeer has glorious moments of self-satisfaction and fury, she’s also forced to roll her eyes as her co-conspiritor peeps from behind a screen. Subtlety exhibited elsewhere is all but eliminated. We barely observe femininity or desire.
The fault lies partly in lack of balance and chemistry and partly in Director Josie Rourke’s rethinking the piece as a melodrama of mores and manners, not the vibrant life or death battle of the sexes its author intended.
Liev Schreiber
We should have suspected how radically this production had changed things in the face of Tom Scutt’s beautifully dilapidated set: faded paint and peeling plaster, minimal furniture under diaphanous drop cloths, candelabras, floral arrangements, period art, and empty picture frames. We’re reminded of the wages of sin by omnipresent decay. As if this weren’t sufficient, contemporary lighting flickers out and rises up as chandeliers descend, so we’re made to distinguish then from now. Ghostly women sing oooo through set adjustments. The original production opened and remained in sensual opulence.
Conveniently a widow, La Marquise de Merteuil has the cleverness, position, resources, and backbone to organize her life and lovers as she chooses. Valmont is her amoral match. The pair, circling one another like feral, though eloquent beasts, had been, and might again be lovers. La Marquise, unaccountably thrown over before she’d been ‘finished,’ wishes revenge on an ex swain about to marry the very young Cecile Valances. (Elena Kampouris making an auspicious debut.) The man’s prize, she tells Valmont, is not Cecile’s inheritance, but her virginity. If he would kindly relieve the girl of her bud before marriage, The Marquise would be obliged.
Elena Kampouris and Liev Schreiber
Valmont at first refuses. He feels Cecile is “…bound to be curious and on her back before the first bouquet of flowers…” i.e. the task is an unworthy challenge. He also has his own current agenda to seduce the unimpeachable Madame de Tourvel without, he adds, disabusing her faith. This would be an accomplishment that could only enhance his considerable reputation. (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen is a graceful, dignified, and then wretched Madame; brava.) When La Marquise offers herself, in exchange for written proof of the deflowering, Valmont agrees. They contrive to place both “victims” at the home of Valmont’s Aunt, Madame de Rosemonde (a superb Mary Beth Peil) whom he will shortly visit. Two birds, as it were, enticed onto one extended perch.
Birgitte Hjort Sorensen and Liev Schreiber
Cecile’s gullible mother (the face-making Ora Jones), Emilie, one of Valmont’s courtesans (a credibly saucy Katrina Cunningham), and Le Chevalier Danceny – a young man besotted with Cecile who, alas, is beneath her while never actually getting beneath her (Raffi Barsoumian, who lacks naiveté ) – become mere pawns. With the help of a spying servant, a duplicitous maid, and the calculating false friendship of La Marquise, Valmont beds the teenager and baits the righteous, married Madame de Tourvel. (This is, alas, poorly depicted as a cold-blooded act, rather than exciting, if initially ambivalent discovery.)
We watch Cecile develop a taste for what’s been forbidden, potentially learning the ways of the world from a master (The Marquise), while Valmont unexpectedly gets enmeshed in a relationship with his prey (Madame de Tourval). The latter, a compelling surprise, revises all plans. La Marquise and Valmont reach a crossroads.
Janet McTeer and Liev Schreiber
This is a splendidly written piece of theater, full of smart double entendre, abject decadence and ultimate risk. Unfortunately, pace that should be scintillating too often lags. Our protagonists think (and act) on their feet, forcing reaction to be as swift or at least revealing wrenching effort. Because Josie Rourke’s vision lacks the guilty pleasure of enjoying the art of consummate manipulation, the horror of its outcome also diminishes.
Costume Design (also by Tom Scutt) is handsome but restrained. We never really get a sense of the luxury and excess that act as a Petrie dish for observed games. Mark Henderson’s Lighting cooperates beautifully with actual candles to great effect. Movement Director Lorin Latarro offers stylized motion without appearing awkward. Extremely believable swordplay is attributable to Fight Director Richard Ryan.
Photos by Joan Marcus Opening: Janet McTeer, Liev Schreiber
The Donmar Warehouse Production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Christopher Hampton From the 1782 novel by Choderlos de Laclos Directed by Josie Rourke Booth Theater 22 West 45th Street
