Alice Ripley Makes a Superb Norma Desmond in NSMT's 'Sunset Boulevard'

The musical "Sunset Boulevard" is based on Billy Wilder's Oscar-winning 1950 melodrama, a potent mix of film noir and cynical Hollywood commentary that rejuvenated the career of former silent queen goddess Gloria Swanson. Adapted by Christopher Hampton, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Don Black, this adaptation was one of the last of the British musicals that took over Broadway in the 1980s and 1990s, and one of the few to lose money due to its enormous costs. The current production, at the North Shore Music Theatre through October 6, offers a superb, stripped-down version with a spectacular performance by Tony Award-winner Alice Ripley as the faded movie queen Norma Desmond.

Desmond, a faded silent-screen goddess living in her Sunset Boulevard mansion, clings to a fantasy that audiences still long for her. In reality, they hardly remember her. Her seclusion is interrupted when an out-of-work screenwriter, Joe Gillis, hides from creditors in her mansion. She persuades him to work on a script she has written that will mark her return to the camera; and he agrees, seduced by her luxurious lifestyle. But feeling trapped by the demanding Desmond, he seeks to escape by clandestinely working on a script with a younger screenwriter (and his best friend's fianc�e) Betty Schaeffer, with whom he falls in love.

Under the direction of Kevin B. Hill, this production may be the North Shore Music Theatre's most perfectly cast show. It has one hell of a leading lady in Alice Ripley, who is totally invested in the role of Desmond, a grand, baroque and deluded middle-aged woman unable to cope with obscurity. Since it premiered in London in 1993, Desmond has been one hell of a diva role that has its own history of diva drama: Patti Lupone was fired by Lloyd-Webber prior to Broadway, then Glenn Close took over and triumphed (winning the Tony), and Faye Dunaway was fired (also by Lloyd-Webber) in Los Angeles before taking over the role in a celebrated fracas.

Coincidently Ripley was in that Broadway production, playing Betty Schaeffer, and dreaming of one day playing Norma. At the NSMT (through October 6), she has come full-circle and made this role her own. Her vocals of Webber's numerous solos are spot-on, including a standing ovation for her show-stopping performance of "As if We Never Said Goodbye," her second act aria about her Hollywood comeback. Simply put, Ripley dazzles as the larger-than-life star. Every word of dialogue and facial expression is packed with power and emotion.