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Gloria Swanson first captivated audiences on the silver screen in “Sunset Boulevard” as faded silent picture starlet Norma Desmond in 1950. It wasn’t until the 90s, but Broadway has taken a couple of stabs at the Billy Wilder cinematic essential since then. Desmond in particular is a role that has been admirably tackled by the likes of Glenn Close and Patti Lupone, and now Nicole Scherzinger is taking her turn on center stage in a revival of the Andrew Lloyd Weber show on a bare minimalist set. Michael Riedel was at opening night and took his turn on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to rave about the show- particularly Scherzinger’s mesmerizing performance, right down to the well-anticipated close-up.
“Nicole Scherzinger- one of the greatest performances I have ever seen on the stage of a Broadway musical,” Riedel raved to Berman. “The intensity, the vulnerability, the great singing that she does, the whole sense of a woman, as Norma Desmond is in Sunset Boulevard, who’s been forgotten by the world, cast aside when she was the biggest star on the planet- and she finds this young man, in whom she invests all her hopes and dreams, who can bring her back to ‘the pictures,’ as she calls them. She is a sexy, seductive tarantula. I thought it was a magnificent performance.”
Riedel continued to rave about Scherzinger, who is making her Broadway debut in the show, which runs at the St. James Theatre. “She sings the hell out of Andrew and my buddy Don Black, the lyricist’s, great score- and just, the way she seduces this guy who does not want to be with her, and in the end, he really wants to get away from her, and she kills him, and they’re all drenched in blood at the end of the show.”
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