Over the past decade or so, Morag Fullarton has been developing a popular line in bijou Hollywood adaptations. With a camp flourish and a multitasking cast, the writer and director has boiled down favourites including Casablanca and It’s a Wonderful Life. She last had a crack at Sunset Boulevard, then billed as a “lunchtime cut”, in 2015 at Glasgow’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint, the company she went on to co-run for four years.
Now associate director at Perth, she has reunited the fine four-strong company who went down so well the first time around, worked in an extra 20 minutes of material and given it a handsome main-stage production. But for all its strengths of mimicry and its affection for Billy Wilder’s 1950 original, it is a show severely lacking in purpose.
It is framed by a pre-shoot discussion. Might they cast Mae West? Would Gene Kelly be too likable? Will Gloria Swanson be a risk, having done only one film in 15 years? Other than a brief debate about a callous film industry, this is the only “backstage” element in what quickly opens up into a filleted but generally word-perfect rendition of the movie.
With its marble arches, leopard-skin throws and luxurious floor tiles, Fraser Lappin’s set captures the extravagant tastes of Norma Desmond, the faded and jaded star of silent cinema. Played by Juliet Cadzow, she is as brittle and grandiose as you remember, a woman whose career and self-definition has been swept away with a passing age.
Caught like a fly in Norma’s web, John Kielty captures the brashness and vulnerability of skint screenwriter Joe Gillis, fated to end up face-down in his employer’s pool. Frances Thorburn, also acting as narrator to help skip through the scenes, is a bright-eyed Betty Schaefer, the script reader, turning Joe’s head and showing a keen ear for snappy Hollywood dialogue. Mark McDonnell is masterfully dry as butler Max and in other roles.
But seen in this context, the play offers little of its own. It is not pastiche, parody, reimagining or commentary. Instead, it is a faithful and rather pointless rendition of a film that, inevitably, does the same job better.