Jamie Lloyd's take on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is a magnificently stylish evening
Jamie Lloyd is not a director who treats the classics deferentially. Rather he strips them down, roughs them up and, if all is going to plan, polishes them to a new and dazzling sheen. The results, as with last year’s production of, can be revelatory. If he doesn’t manage quite such reinvention with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical take on the) a great star, but times and tastes in Hollywood have moved on, even if she hasn’t.
Lloyd’s production does away with all set and props – those not entirely familiar with the story may struggle at times – and instead, fittingly for a narrative of the film world, favours audiovisual technology. The cast are ostentatiously miked up and the volume is pumped to aggressive levels; a slick touch has actors despondently discard their head mikes in front of us when their characters depart the story.
For all the many stylistics in the mounting film noir feel, it is Scherzinger the punters will come to see . Her performance is big on ethereal aura, melodramatic arm gestures and hair-swishing, but she is less skilled at suggesting any interesting interiority for Norma. She is fragile but fierce, a wounded, half-demented animal, who belts out an imperious summary of her former silver screen magic in “With One Look”.
Scherzinger can, of course, sing , and in an unwelcome new West End trend, each number of hers was greeted by a standing ovation. Francis gives a strong account of Joe’s early-onset disaffection and there is fine work from newcomer Grace Hodgett Young as script editor Betty. Fabian Aloise’s choreography is gloriously adrenalised, making opening number “Let’s Have Lunch” an uncompromising statement of Hollywood’s thrusting world. There is so much, almost too much, going on here.
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