Patti LuPone’s “Sunset Boulevard” Story Deserves a Redemption Arc (And She’s Not Alone)
by Ashley Griffin, Guest Editorial
I just saw one of the greatest musical theater performances I’ve ever seen in my life - and it’s in the running for all time “greatest” status.
But first, some backstory.
Most of the theater world is familiar with the infamous drama surrounding the original production(s) of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s early ’90s musical adaptation of “Sunset Boulevard.” The show was based on the 1950 film of the same name, which was directed and co-written by Billy Wilder and is considered one of the greatest films of all time - ranked number twelve on AFI’s 1998 One Hundred Best American Films of the 20th Century list, nominated for eleven academy awards, winning three, and included in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Wilder was inspired by the grand Hollywood houses he lived near, many of which were homes to former stars from the silent era, and Wilder wondering how they spent their time now that they had basically been exiled from Hollywood (after being a large reason Hollywood became HOLLYWOOD in the first place.)
The film follows down-on-his-luck aspiring writer Joe Gillis, who accidentally falls into the life of (fictional) silent film has-been Norma Desmond. What follows is something akin to a Hitchcock thriller, where Norma’s delusions of returning to her glory days threaten to destroy (and eventually end) Joe’s life. The film starred Gloria Swanson, a former silent film star, as well as other stars of the silent screen both in front of and behind the camera, including Buster Keaton and Cecil B. DeMille (playing himself).
To make a very long story short, LuPone was cast as Norma in the West End production of Webber’s adaptation (their first reunion since LuPone’s breakout role in Lloyd Webber’s Broadway incarnation of “Evita”), which preceded the Broadway opening. LuPone was under contract to continue as Norma in the Broadway transfer of “Sunset” after she completed her West End run.
Webber had multiple productions of the show premiering simultaneously: in this case, a Los Angeles production starring Glenn Close as Norma. He decided he wanted Close in the Broadway production instead of LuPone and fired LuPone (which she and her reps found out about when it was announced in the trade papers that Close would play the role on Broadway.) What followed was what LuPone described as not just the worst thing that ever happened in her career, but in her LIFE, and a lawsuit that awarded LuPone an enormous sum of money and ended any relationship between LuPone and Webber.
Most people in the states have seen Close in the role (which she reprised for the 2017 Broadway revival), or Nicole Scherzinger, who is continuing her turn originating Norma in the experimental revival currently playing on Broadway, having come with the show after its West End premiere.
But unless you were in London in 1993, you never got to see LuPone do the role live, not counting her occasional concert performances of Norma’s two main songs. The press at the time seemed to go out of their way to paint LuPone as “lesser” than Close, claiming that all one had to do was look at the contrasting reviews between London and L.A. for proof, never mind that reviews are not always what you should be basing all your creative decisions on. Also, some critics were saying that Glenn Close was by far the better choice for the role – Robert Osborne in the Hollywood Reporter said:
“Glenn Close is a cinch to be an infinitely better Desmond; for one thing, she already possesses an imperious air that suits the role extremely well.”
Close wouldn’t open in the show for more than a year, with her payout being well worth it to make the show succeed.
There was no acknowledgment of the fact that LuPone has notoriously been an artist who, to quote one of her friends, “Consistently gets bad reviews but keeps consistently working.” “Evita” itself got mixed reviews, and it made LuPone a star for the ages.
NOTE: It is shockingly difficult to find the actual reviews from this production, likely because it was before widespread digitization. So, I haven’t been able to see for myself what LuPone’s reviews actually said other than what is quoted in her autobiography.
But I just got to see LuPone’s full performance from the early ‘90’s.
Someone leaked footage (I just discovered it) from the original workshop of “Sunset Boulevard”—the one in the theater at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s house. It was sans sets and with limited props, costumes, and orchestrations (the only live musician appears to be a pianist to provide underscoring).
I know there are complex issues surrounding bootlegging, and LuPone herself is not a fan (though I don’t believe this footage is a bootleg, but rather legal footage that has somehow been leaked, creating separate issues). The way this workshop was filmed, you can see the artist’s performances, which is not the case with many bootlegs of the West End production. And the actors, especially LuPone, weren’t limited by blocking that required them to run around a massive set. They could just BE and ACT.
*EDITOR’S Note: Due to the legalities surrounding bootlegs, we’re not providing a link to the video.
“Sunset Boulevard” is a problematic show. It doesn’t totally work. It certainly shouldn’t have worked in a black box with an under-rehearsed cast (though, for me, that should always be the litmus test of whether a show works or not).
But then LuPone came onstage. And I can’t even begin to express what I experienced.
But I’m going to try.
For the first time, Norma Desmond (and the musical in general) made sense. David Mamet, a frequent collaborator with LuPone, has infamously said: “There is no character.” Take Mamet for what you will, and this is not the way in which he meant that statement, but it came to mind, in a positive way, for me with LuPone’s performance. Norma is one of the most infamous “characters” there is.
When we think of her, we think of an over-dramatic, mugging, half (or more than half) mad woman in a turban. But with LuPone, there was no “character” – there was a human being. All the things that define Norma were present – but they were organic and, above all, HONEST. In LuPone’s hands, Norma’s bold statements became almost magical incantations. She says we won’t be able to look away, and we can’t. I didn’t want to so much as blink and risk losing a moment of her performance.
LuPone does what any great actress does – let the situation be ridiculous while staying honest at the center of it. Her Norma wasn’t “wacky” because she acted “wacky”. Her Norma was a beautiful, complex, real, empathetic human being whose unbalanced actions, such as burying a beloved pet monkey in the backyard and believing too intensely that her career had to be based on who she once was manifested in creating a starring role for a 16-year-old with a script hundreds of pages long, she truly believed were completely normal and justified and because she honestly did, we, if not “did too,” at least understood how she could believe them – a big ask from Norma in this piece.
When LuPone sings, “With one look I can break your heart,” she actually DOES it. Unlike every other performance I’ve ever seen of the song, where the singer tells you a lot about what she CAN do but never does, LuPone surmounts that “don’t think of a pink elephant” obstacle that makes doing something emotional that you’re told to do or that you say you’re doing, all but impossible, and manages to do both at once.
It’s what I think of as the “Richard the 3rd” trick. Shakespeare’s Richard is so brilliant in large part because he spends a significant amount of time turning to the audience, saying: “This is what I’m going to do,” then does it with such talent that you forget everything he told you, then turns back around and says “Wasn’t that great the way I did that?!” That’s exactly what LuPone’s Norma did, and it’s one of the greatest acting “flexes” I’ve ever seen.
LuPone was the first Norma, and I’m including Gloria Swanson (who I adore) here, where I truly saw what had made her such a star and saw that she was still that person. It was not delusional that Norma should be back on screen. It was delusional how she thought she would get there and that she thought that the world of Hollywood would ever come close to being kind to her. And that kind of delusion is tragic, not something to be gawked at, as it is often framed.
I was rooting for LuPone’s Norma the entire show. When she wanted Joe out, I wanted him out. When she wanted to play Salome, I wanted her to play Salome, when she wanted Jo, I wanted her to end up with Joe – even though I knew both those things were impossible. I understood, for the first time, why Max was so devoted to Norma.
In LuPone’s hands, “Sunset Boulevard” wasn’t a “Twilight Zone”-esque story about a man whose life is destroyed by a crazy woman haunted by Hollywood’s past. It was a Greek tragedy about a woman who had been abused by a system that is still very much alive and well. It was the first time for me that the story was actually about Hollywood.
I’ve seen Glenn Close in the role. I’m a great fan of Close’s, but, and I’m going to ruffle some feathers here, I don’t believe this was her show. The fact that Broadway audiences were denied LuPone’s stunning portrayal is a true travesty. The thing that makes LuPone a star is not her voice (though she, of course, has a legendary, brilliant voice) it’s the fact that she’s one of a dying breed of true blue, world-class, classical actors – and she brings that to every role she does – including musical theater ones.
LuPone also has an opportunity to showcase some of her more “experimental” acting abilities in this paired-down presentation. Because of the lack of sets, props, and costumes, there are many moments that are performed as if they were being staged in an East Village off-off-Broadway production. When LuPone’s Norma first enters, she cradles a scarf meant to represent her beloved, now deceased, chimp. When she lays the “chimp” to rest, she unravels the fabric and begins to use it as a scarf. The way she endows that fabric reminded me of a dramatic version of Robin Williams’s comic antics with a shawl on “Inside the Actor’s Studio.” I felt like I’d watched a beloved animal vanish before my very eyes, and I felt the loss.
LuPone makes Webber’s show WORK, and I know I’m going out on a limb here as someone who was not present when these things were going down, but based on subsequent events, I feel this opinion is not without merit - there is a big problem when “review chasing” (much like corporate think tanks or focus groups) is used to make artistic decisions, when creators are seeking celebrity instead of artistic merit, or flat out don’t want to be overshadowed by someone else in their production. LuPone has said:
“This was yet more proof of the total disregard Andrew seems to have for the directors, designers, and actors who present his work to the public. From his point of view, there was nothing collaborative in the success of any of these shows; they sprang purely from his own musical genius. The rest of us who took what we were given-shaped it and made it work-had nothing to do with it. And we did make it work-not to take anything away from the writing, but you can’t put a score on a bare stage and have an audience feel and care and stay interested for two and a half hours. It’s a collaboration.”
Here's the behind-the-scenes truth according to numerous documentaries, more recent press coverage, and first-hand accounts:
As I mentioned earlier, Webber wanted to open multiple productions simultaneously - LuPone hadn’t even started rehearsals for the West End production when it was announced that Glenn Close would be playing Norma in L.A. Whether this was to build buzz, keep the show the “star,” and not one particular performer (as was the express goal of “Phantom”), or to hedge his bets and “audition” his casts on a global scale (or, likely, all of the above) we can’t know for sure, but regardless, LuPone wasn’t super comfortable with this set up – feeling, rightly, that it created competition between productions, and diluted who was, officially, the original cast.
And that’s not to mention the fact that some people didn’t understand why LuPone wouldn’t be in the L.A. company, imagining it had something to do with her performance (in reality, it was a timing issue) with said speculation happening, again, before LuPone had even started rehearsals (and that was after months of drama in the press claiming that Meryl Steep and LuPone were having a cat fight over who would play Norma in London while LuPone was already deep into contract negotiations).
But Webber promised LuPone that, no matter what, she would be starring in the role on Broadway, not Close. She got an ironclad contract that said just that. Indeed, she refused to get on a plane to London without it.
LuPone was then treated horribly during the West End run. It came out later that Webber’s company was likely trying to make her life a living hell so that she would break her contract and leave the show. Regardless, LuPone went out on stage and did her job every night.
The rumors were that Close was a bigger “name” and that LuPone didn’t get the reviews Lloyd Webber wanted (he made the same case against the West End cast of “Bad Cinderella” – blaming them for the show’s poor reviews, which he then went on to receive again with the brand new Broadway cast).
All of this came to a head when it was announced in the press that Close would open the Broadway production. That’s how LuPone and her reps found out she’d been fired. What followed was a massive lawsuit, which LuPone won. This resulted in her receiving a monetary settlement but never having the opportunity to play Norma in the States.
But this story is about more than what happened to LuPone. She’s a huge star with a history of speaking her mind, and it’s easy to run with the negative “diva” story as far as “Sunset” is concerned. But with time, it’s become apparent that the essence of what happened to LuPone happens more than we’d like to admit and often to performers that CAN’T fight back like LuPone did. When the “Sunset” drama broke out, it was framed as just that – drama. The press had a field day pitting the composer with a desire for a cast change against the emotional star who was angry at the decision.
But as time has gone by, and irrespective of the fact that we have gotten the whole, gritty, horrible story (not to mention that LuPone won her lawsuit), the “Sunset” situation now seems much less “drama” and the canary in the coal mine of how artists were starting to be treated more and more by the famous, largely men, who had hired them.
People remember what happened to LuPone on “Sunset,” but they likely don’t know that Lloyd Webber has frequently pit casts against each other, broken contracts and fired performers (including LuPone’s co-star on “Sunset”, Kevin Anderson, who played Joe Gillis – no one ever talks about his firing (also without being told)), not to mention placing the blame of an unsuccessful production squarely on the shoulders of his cast (he seems to be very selective in which reviews he “listens” to and which he thinks are B.S.).
Martin Charnin, most well known as the conceiver, lyricist and director of “Annie” has a history of replacing Annies last minute in not great and often traumatic ways (just look up the stories of Joanna Pacitti and Kristen Vigard as two of the most infamous examples.) That’s a bit of another story for another time, but it closely parallels LuPone’s experience on “Sunset.”
There’s a notorious story that when “Grey Gardens” was going to transfer from off-Broadway to Broadway, one of the principle cast members found out they would be the only person NOT moving with the show when they were backstage and learned that they were the only cast member who hadn’t been called into a meeting with the producers, and the only person not celebrating backstage. There was no explanation as to why. And, though I don’t know for sure, it is likely that they had right of first refusal for a transfer.
And that’s not to mention the recent controversy over Lloyd Webber’s treatment of the entire West End cast of “Bad Cinderella” (especially star Carrie Hope Fletcher) before the show’s remounting on Broadway. MickeyJo Theatre did a wonderful deep dive into the drama surrounding the West End closing of the show: Carrie Hope Fletcher has also strongly insinuated, without going into specifics, just how horrible the “Bad Cinderella” experience, specifically in relation to Lloyd Webber, was. And none of it was a secret. Let’s just say that the audience full on booed when Lloyd Webber’s name was mentioned at the curtain call speech on closing night of the West End production. Both LuPone (with regards to “Sunset”) and the company of “Bad Cinderella” on the West End (especially leading lady Fletcher) have said that their experiences, and specifically their treatment by Lloyd Webber, was one of the worst things to have ever happened to them.
Not only does this kind of treatment need to stop, but we need to stop framing the narrative around it as “fun diva drama.” It needs to be unacceptable. There are plenty of instances of actors needing to be replaced for various reasons and producers handling the situation with integrity. This isn’t about “actors are always right” but rather about “don’t mistreat anyone who’s a part of a show,” whether you decide they need to be replaced or not, and that replacement must always happen in a legal, as empathetic as possible, way.
But I also hope that the conversation around these situations can be reframed to focus on the beautiful work that was done by these performers, not be singularly about the “drama” surrounding their exit from a show. I’m not advocating for bootlegs or leaking footage, but if you can check out clips (or, ideally, the whole production to see the work in context) of LuPone as Norma PLEASE do so. Her extraordinary work should be celebrated, not lost. It breaks my heart to think that when Patti LuPone and “Sunset Boulevard” are mentioned in the same sentence it most likely conjures up images of lawsuits, and not deeply moving artistic work that should be studied in all musical theater programs.
Make up your own mind about various performances. Don’t let the press dictate what you think it is, or was. Go to the Lincoln Center archive if you can and watch performances you haven’t seen in person. Don’t let drama, and bad faith actors, destroy some of the most beautiful work that’s ever been onstage.