Sunset Boulevard in Concert at Home | Review
December 22, 2020 Last updated:
December 23, 2020 Sunset Boulevard – Ria Jones (Norma Desmond) – Photography by Marc Brenner
I couldn’t help raising a smile last year when the Almeida Theatre in London put on
The Duchess of Malfi, a Jacobean revenge tragedy, as their Christmas production. The Curve Theatre, or simply Curve to its staff and regular patrons, always leaves it to other venues in Leicestershire to hold pantomimes, though they have in recent years gone for seasonal musicals like
White Christmas and
Scrooge the Musical. It makes their choice to put on Sunset Boulevard an unusual one for a Christmas show – although there are New Year’s Eve celebrations as part of the narrative, it’s still fundamentally rather sad. If there’s any humour to be found in it, it’s dark, which makes this production is a remarkably relevant one for our times.