Nicole Scherzinger is set to bring her award-winning performance as Norma Desmond in Jamie Lloyd’s hit London production of Sunset Boulevard to Broadway in 2024.
The critically acclaimed production, which gives Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical a pared-down makeover, has wowed audiences in the West End and will open in New York City later this year—dates and theater to be confirmed. The show closes in London this Saturday, Jan. 6.
Scherzinger, former lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls and X Factor judge, won the Best Musical Performance for her role at the 2023 Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Lloyd won the Best Director award. The show also recently received nine WhatsOnStage Award nominations.
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Scherzinger’s London co-stars Tom Francis (as Joe Gillis), Grace Hodgett-Young (as Betty Schaefer), and Olivier Award-winner David Thaxton (as Max Von Mayerling) will join her on Broadway.
Those who have seen Lloyd’s other productions—on Broadway earlier this year, a starkly reimagined A Doll’s House starring Jessica Chastain—will not be surprised to find his Boulevard stripped of the baroque styling of Billy Wilder’s 1950 movie, and instead played out on a bare-looking stage with actors in sleek, modern dress, and—as videos of curtain calls widely circulated on social media have shown—much blood spilled by the end.
The company of Jamie Lloyd's London revival of 'Sunset Boulevard.'
Marc BrennerCritics raved about the West End production, which opened in October. The New York Times’ Matt Wolf called it “reckless and daring, stretching its source material to the limit and beyond.” Scherzinger “gives a career-defining performance,” Wolf said, adding that he was unable to imagine “another London show generating comparable buzz this season.”
Scherzinger’s rendition of Norma’s famous number, “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” wrote Wolf, “begins plaintively, even tenderly, before building to a mighty roar. Scherzinger extends her long, sinuous arms in the direction of the audience like talons toward prey.”
The Evening Standard’s Nick Curtis said Scherzinger “brings not only an operatically powerful voice but shrewd comedy, harrowing pathos and a dancer’s physical precision” to her role as Norma, in “a tour de force of a show, in love with showbiz and the creation and destruction of illusions.”
Other critics were more qualified in their praise. While the Guardian’s Arifa Akbar said the singing “dazzled across the board,” the “glut of concepts” in the show’s stylized staging left Akbar “removed and restless.”
Variety’s David Benedict, while praising Scherzinger’s “dominating” stage presence and the technical ingenuity of the show’s staging (including cameras, projections, and a large screen), noted that “Scherzinger plays both to the audience and the camera with elaborate knowingness. She’s at least as arch as the character, but since Lloyd rarely lets her relax it’s hard to empathize.”
