Andrew Lloyd Webber is rarely absent from a stage somewhere and it’s safe to say his work will outlive the scoffers, of whom there are many. Oh well, he can always cry all the way to the bank having landed hits (along with a few misses) for more than 50 years.

And just recently there’s been a re-evaluation going on. The New York Times pointed out last year that British director Jamie Lloyd’s stripped back Sunset Blvd. was in the company of reassessments of Cats (translated to the gay Ballroom scene), Evita (a feminist reading) and Jesus Christ Superstar (by the always stimulating Ivo van Hove). Even Starlight Express got a loud makeover by &Juliet director Luke Sheppard in London last year.

 “We know we can reinvent Shakespeare. We know we can reinvent Chekhov. Why can’t we reinvent Andrew Lloyd Webber? It’s happening,” Lloyd said recently. Many would argue with the bracketing of that trio but you get Lloyd’s point.

“It’s very much a kind of psychological chamber piece,” Lloyd told The NYT earlier this year when describing his version of Sunset Blvd., the story of a mostly forgotten silent-movie diva and the writer drawn into her fantasy of a comeback. No, not comeback. Norma Desmond hates that word. Her return.

The production, which premiered in London in October last year and was rewarded with seven Olivier awards, has now transferred to Broadway. Previews are underway ahead of the official opening on October 20.

The show has no set to speak of, characters’ emotions are literally writ large in video close-ups and there is “a stupendous sense of reinvention, with an end scene so arresting that it surprises even those who know what’s coming” according to The Guardian.

It sounds light years away from more conventional readings, as does the performance of Lloyd’s Norma, 47-year-old former pop star Nicole Scherzinger. Fascinatingly, Lloyd has Scherzinger play not the 50-year-old of the original text but a 40-year-old. Yes, at just 40 this woman is the faded star of yesteryear. Ouch!

Scherzinger joins a diverse array of stars who have played Norma over the musical’s more than 30-year history. When the production opened in London in 1993 it was with Patti LuPone, who was then famously discarded for Broadway. Glenn Close, not primarily a singer, opened there and was feted in the role. “One of the great stage performances of the 20^th century,” said The NYT. 

The incomparable Betty Buckley took over from Close. Elaine Paige, Lloyd Webber’s first Evita, sang the role as did British 60s pop star Petula Clark. When Clark was on holiday the Anita of the film version of West Side Story, Rita Moreno, stepped in. In Germany, the American-born star Helen Schneider was a spell-binding Norma with blues in her voice and a cabaret singer’s art in the delivery. When Sunset Blvd. opened in Melbourne in 1996 it was with Debra Byrne in the starring role and the ferocious Maria Mercedes as her alternate. Byrne, not yet 40 at the time but supposedly 50, sang Norma with a lustrous, youthful sheen. How otherwise? And so on. 

Which brings me to the Opera Australia/GWB Entertainment production currently running in Sydney. It stars Lloyd Webber’s original Christine Daaé from The Phantom of the Opera, Sarah Brightman – a controversial casting choice to some. So controversial that Titanique, the rude and rollicking parody of James Cameron’s blockbuster currently running in Sydney gives OA’s Sunset Blvd. a shoutout alongside many other zeitgeisty things.

Brightman’s soprano is indeed a voice type not usually associated with Norma Desmond but I would suggest that doesn’t disqualify her from the role. Far from it. 

Now long beyond playing the ingenue, Brightman nevertheless carries with her something of that girlishness. What we see and how Norma sees herself are intertwined perspectives. Poor deluded Norma plays a young, distorted version of who she believes herself still to be. 

The higher, lighter quality of Brightman’s voice and the at times substantial vibrato are part of a tremulous, interior reading of a woman untethered from reality.

“Madam is extremely fragile,” says Max von Mayerling Norma’s major-domo and keeper of the flame (Robert Grubb). That line could have been made for Brightman. She isn’t afraid to show frailty or extreme vulnerability, going very close to the edge of madness from the beginning. At the same time there is exceptional intimacy in her treatment of what we might call Norma’s manifestos, the songs With One Look, New Ways to Dream and As if We Never Said Goodbye. They are for herself and her people, except the people no longer care. It’s very touching. 

Paul Warwick Griffin’s production isn’t fully convincing in all its choices but there’s a splendid moment near the end of the first act. It’s New Year’s Eve and writer Joe Gillis has fled Norma’s palazzo to attend a party with his impecunious showbiz friends. The locations melt into one another and Norma’s near-empty house becomes the crowded room in which the friends gather. As they carouse, Norma wends her way through the crowd, unseen. She’s a ghost, just as Gillis is a ghost, a man narrating the story of his own murder. 

But Brightman isn’t the only Norma in town. At several performances a week in Sydney (and many more in Melbourne when Brightman was injured), the Australian music-theatre star Silvie Paladino rules imperiously. This Norma has for the longest time displayed a tough carapace and strong survival instinct. You hear it in the way she commands the room with With One Look and As If We Never Said Goodbye. Towards the end you can see the lost woman but before that she’s quite the fighter. In this reading, when we hear Max say he’ll never let Norma surrender he could be talking about himself and his own lost career.

There may be two Normas in Sydney at the moment but just one Joe Gillis, interpreted by Tim Draxl differently for each Norma. His frustration is ever-present but with Brightman (seen in Melbourne and then Sydney) there’s a layer of tenderness too. With Paladino (seen in Sydney) Draxl is more ascerbic and the performance larger; possibly even too big at the performance I saw. Not different was Draxl’s delivery of the title song at the top of the second act, a show-stopper for all occasions.

Just for the record, I’ve seen Schneider, Moreno, Byrne, Mercedes, Brightman and Paladino in the part. All were completely different and I enjoyed each one greatly. The role can take it.

Sunset Boulevard runs until November 1 at the Sydney Opera House. The production then moves to Singapore in February with Brightman.