Glenn Close just can’t get enough of Norma Desmond. The Fatal Attraction star will take her new crack at the ageing silent film star from the musical Sunset Boulevard to Broadway, something she says is a “closing of a circle.”
The English National Opera’s stripped-down revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical starring Close will land at the Palace Theatre in February with a 40-piece orchestra under the direction of Lonny Price. Close won a Tony Award in 1995 as Desmond.
“To come back to a role as rich as Norma Desmond after 22 years of life was transformative for me,” Close said. “I find the new Norma very different from the one that I did 22 years [ago]. And it’s a very different show.”
Close was last on Broadway in 2014 in a revival of the play A Delicate Balance. Her film and TV roles include Dangerous Liaisons, Air Force One, Fatal Attraction and Damages.
Of revisiting Sunset Boulevard, she said: “It’s much more rigorous for me now. It’s much more emotional, much more human. But one should always leap off a cliff at intervals in one’s life.”
Sunset Boulevard premiered in the West End in 1993 and starred Patti LuPone. It tells the story of a faded film star who recruits a young writer to help relaunch her career. It has a book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and the songs With One Look, As If We Never Said Goodbye and Perfect Year.
The latest version took London by storm and there was instantly talk of transferring it to Broadway. “I thought, ‘Well that’s the closing of a rather large circle.’”
Might she expect to tackle Desmond again in a decade or so? Close just laughed: “No, no. The circle is closed.”
