Sunset Boulevard

(Comedy Theatre, 23 May 2009)

A successful genius rarely operates alone. For instance, a successful picture requires skilful actors, a director with a vision, a team of script-writers, a producer with a taste and confidence necessary to halt the release of the picture in order to re-shoot some scenes---and also luck. Even the product of a seemingly lone writer is a story to which the intruders into the writer's life and the editor have contributed significantly. Finally, the public sifts through the creative works and appoints only few to immortality.

This tribute musical is a remake of the non-musical movie of the same title, but unlike that movie, the musical version will not gain immortality. Nonetheless, the musical has a value, as it signals historical continuity to those in the audience who find such continuity comforting. The audience, in turn, encourages such manifestations of continuity by thanking the actors in person for recreating and handing over to the audience the characters, which the audience is free to adopt and improve upon.

The play is about a writer and an actress who have lost the confidence in themselves and the belief in the industry to which they belong. They find temporary consolation in each other's company. It is harder, however, to agree on an imaginary world than on a real one.

The direction lacks Trevor Nunn, and music and libretto lack Cole Porter. Despite the conducive plot, the action never reaches the intensity at which a song would be a natural expression of one's emotion. The leads do good jobs, but mainly by approximating the performances of their counterparts in the motion picture.

The costumes were poor. Fedoras with the rims rolled up, the male lead's off-the-rack skinny trousers and his three-button jacket were accomplices in an unintended sartorial potpourri. The lead's polo t-shirt, blue on screen, is grey on stage---a gaffe that has robbed the character of much of his depth.