Washington Post - Highly Recommended
"...Signature is rolling out "Sunset Boulevard" for its long-stalled Washington premiere, and the company ties the show up in some handsome bows. Daniel Conway's sets make superb use of the 276-seat main stage - is this the smallest theater "Sunset" has ever played? - and Kathleen Geldard's costumes becomingly evoke the setting's mid-century styles. Conway's best idea has to do with the placement of that grand orchestra. Perching the musicians on a balcony behind the set, he creates the illusion that they exist in the dark interior of Norma's mansion: Panels divide to reveal conductor Jon Kalbfleisch and his many players, obscured slightly by ornate grillwork. This Norma really does live in deluxe seclusion!"
Washington Examiner - Recommended
"...
What's apparent from the 140 minutes I did see is that this is a first-rate version of the second- or possibly third-rate musical that Webber hath wrung from Wilder's unimpeachable movie. Signature looks to have spared no expense: Scenic designer Daniel Conway has impressively re-created, in the same space, both Norma's haunted old eight-bedroom palace and the ropes, lights, and sandbags of a midcentury soundstage. Norma's 1929 Isotta-Fraschini -- the luxury car that contributes a key plot point -- is here, too. Even better, director Eric Schaeffer has stuffed a 20-piece orchestra into the intimate, 276-seat confines of Signature's main house. Conducted by Jon Kalbfleisch, the musicians sound sublime though the songs are, with one or two exceptions, ersatz and maddeningly repetitive even by Webber standards. You resent their intrusion almost every time one limps in to interrupt the story that book writers and, far less successfully, lyricists Don Black and Christopher Hampton have preserved intact from Wilder and Charles Brackett's screenplay, which remains a harrowing, wickedly funny tale of obsession and compromise in Hollywood."
Baltimore Sun - Recommended
"...While it can’t eclipse the silver screen original — what could? — “Sunset Boulevard” represents some of Webber’s most polished work. Signature’s passionate, attractive production helps it shine all the more brightly."
MetroWeekly - Recommended
"...But these things are Andrew Lloyd Webber's stock-in-trade, so it should be surprising to very few that Sunset Boulevard is filled with entirely unsubtle loops, wall-to-wall lyrical chatter and a few well-placed, back-of-the-house flooding numbers. Without question, it makes for a show that will quickly grate the nerves of some in the audience, but Signature's take on it results in a musical that is more than ready for its close-up."
Talkin Broadway - Recommended
"...Like the Phantom, like Evita, Norma must control the action with her outsized emotions. Most important is the narcissism of an actress once the most famous in the world and now almost forgotten, of course, but there's also a complicated mixture of anger at the film industry (she would still be on top in Hollywood, she believes, had the studios not jumped to introduce talking pictures) and noblesse oblige toward her fans by attempting to return to the screen. Florence Lacey is a skilled musical actress who sings beautifully and succeeds in embodying the character's excessive pride and underlying vulnerability—but she lacks the larger-than-life quality that would make Norma more than part of an ensemble."
Washington City Paper - Somewhat Recommended
"...It’s not enough, alas, to make the production soar, despite that bourbon-and-caramel orchestra and the ingenious setting Daniel Conway has devised. (It turns the larger of Signature’s two houses into a Paramount soundstage, then flies in Norma’s grand staircase and rolls her famously elaborate limousine across the stage.) Some unhappy sightlines will spark some impatient shifting, particularly in big ensemble scenes and for patrons sitting toward the right of the house. But the real trouble with Sunset Boulevard, as ever, is that while it may be a moody tale about a storied address, it’s ultimately not much of a property."
Fairfax Times - Recommended
"..."Sunset Boulevard," the mixed bag of musical tricks from Andrew Lloyd Webber, has suffered a literal star-crossed career from its 1993 opening on London's West End and then later that year at the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles, with Patti Lupone and Glenn Close respectively playing the deliriously doomed Norma Desmond, the silent film star vamp now long past her prime and waiting like a spider in her web for the entirely vulnerable young screenwriter Joe Gillis to fall into her clutches."
Washington Diplomat - Highly Recommended
"...Taut, snappy and gorgeous, Signature Theatre’s production of “Sunset Boulevard” is a richly entertaining and lavish look at the end of Hollywood’s Golden Age."
BrightestYoungThings - Highly Recommended
"...In 1950, Billy Wilder offered a self-reflexive glance at the fraying of old Hollywood and a cynical portrayal of the downside of celebrity in the classic Sunset Boulevard. Years later, Andrew Lloyd Webber set it to song, and today Signature Theater brings the timeless story of Norma Desmond to D.C. for its long overdue area premiere. The show is executed with incredible precision in terms of both performance and production, yielding an exhilarating piece of musical theater noir."
Washington Blade - Recommended
"...Director Eric Schaeffer has accomplished what is required of anyone hoping to successfully launch a production of a classic work — he manages to bring it all to life without getting in the way. There’s nothing about this production that ostentatiously draws attention to itself. He and his team have a field day but the focus is always on how well the script and score work, never on the players themselves."
DramaUrge - Highly Recommended
"...Washington DC-area theatergoers: Are You Ready for Your Closeup of Sunset Boulevard? You will never see a show of this caliber in so intimate a setting or experience the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber and book & lyrics of Don Black & Christopher Hampton with such emotional impact and clarity as you will from the thrust stage of the 276-seat MAX Theatre at Signature (to 2/13) in Arlington."
Curtain Up - Highly Recommended
"...While Norma and Joe have fine voices that can and sometimes do evoke passion, it is Ed Dixon's rich, operatic basso profundo, superb diction and stonefaced delivery that audiences remember. Looking like the late Charles Laughton, he makes the most of acting and singing the imperious, keeper-of-the-flame Max von Mayerling. When he sings "The Greatest Star of All"and "New Ways to Dream" the house is under his spell. Joe was weak in setting up his opening number, "Let Me Take You Back Six Months," but much more animated in "This Time Next Year" and the signature song, "Sunset Boulevard." Norma's "Once Upon A Time" evoked little empathy but "As If We Never Said Goodbye,""an ode to the delusion that stardom never fades, is Florence Lacey's best rendition of the night. The supporting cast, which has many Signature regulars is fine -- Stephen Gregory Smith and Harry A. Winter particularly."
DCTheatreScene - Recommended
Sunset Boulevard is not the best musical that Andrew Lloyd Webber ever composed. While its primary storyline—the decline and fall of an aging silent film diva–is oddly compelling, its score gets repetitious and its lyrics often fail to scan with the music.
That having been said, Signature Theatre’s new production of this show is slick, compelling, and surprisingly moving.
