Glenn Close as Norma Desmond (Photo: Nick Wall via The Broadway Blog.)
Producers Paul Blake and Mike Bosner announced today the Broadway return of three-time Tony Award-winner Glenn Close in her most iconic role, Norma Desmond, in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tony Award-winning Best Musical, Sunset Boulevard.
Based on Billy Wilder’s classic Academy Award-winning film, Sunset Boulevard features a celebrated book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton. Direct from a bravura sold-out engagement earlier this year at the English National Opera (ENO), which marked Ms. Close’s West End debut, this production of Sunset Boulevard will feature a 40-piece orchestra on the stage of The Palace Theatre (1564 7th Avenue). Directed by Lonny Price, performances will begin on Thursday, February 2, 2017, with an official opening night set for Thursday, February 9, 2017. Sunset Boulevard will play a limited 16-week engagement. Tickets go on sale today, Tuesday, October 25, 2016 at 11 am.
“Seeing Glenn Close revisit her Tony Award-winning performance in London’s West End was a transcendent experience for us both,” said producers Paul Blake and Mike Bosner. “We wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Glenn’s masterful performance is even richer and more layered than before. And hearing the sweeping, breathtaking score performed by a 40-piece orchestra only solidified why Andrew Lloyd Webber is a living legend.”
The ENO production of Sunset Boulevard was just nominated for two Evening Standard Awards, including “Best Musical” and “Best Musical Performance” nod for Glenn Close.
In her mansion on Sunset Boulevard, faded, silent-screen goddess, Norma Desmond, lives in a fantasy world. Impoverished screen writer, Joe Gillis, on the run from debt collectors, stumbles into her reclusive world. Persuaded to work on Norma’s ‘masterpiece’, a film script that she believes will put her back in front of the cameras, he is seduced by her and her luxurious life-style. Joe becomes entrapped in a claustrophobic world until his love for another woman leads him to try and break free with dramatic consequences.
Sunset Boulevard originally premiered in London’s West End at the Adelphi Theatre in 1993, where it ran for almost four years and played to nearly two million people. The American premiere was at the Shubert Theatre in Century City, Los Angeles in December 1993 with Glenn Close as Norma. The musical was an instant success and played 369 performances before moving to Broadway in 1994 with, what was then, the biggest advance in Broadway history, at $37.5million.
When Sunset Boulevard opens on Broadway, Andrew Lloyd Webber will have the rare distinction of having four musicals running simultaneously on Broadway: The Phantom of the Opera, School of Rock – The Musical, CATS, and Sunset Boulevard.
