About the work
Sunset Boulevard is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) with lyrics and book by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, premiered in 1993 in London's West End. Based on Billy Wilder's 1950 film classic of the same name, it won seven Tony Awards on Broadway, including Best Musical.
Plot
In 1949 Hollywood, the unsuccessful screenwriter Joe Gillis, fleeing creditors, stumbles into the decaying mansion of the former silent-film diva Norma Desmond. The ageing star lives in seclusion, sustained by the illusion of an imminent comeback, and hires Joe to revise her megalomaniacal screenplay. Joe becomes her kept lover but longs for a life of his own and for the young Betty. When he tries to leave Norma, she shoots him—and, finally lost to delusion, descends the staircase "ready for her close-up."
Cultural significance
Sunset Boulevard is among Lloyd Webber's most ambitious works and is famous for its cinematically lush orchestral sound. Norma Desmond's great arias, With One Look and As If We Never Said Goodbye, became showpieces for divas from Patti LuPone and Glenn Close to Nicole Scherzinger. The work dissects Hollywood's cult of fame and youth and is regarded as a darkly glamorous masterpiece of the mega-musical.