Photo Flash: SUNSET BOULEVARD at Portland Center Stage

 

It may be set in 1950, but it could just as easily have been ripped from this morning's TMZ.com - Portland Center Stage brings Billy Wilder's glittering Hollywood train wreck of a tale to the main stage with Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard.  Sunset Boulevard previews on Tuesday September 14th, with press night on Friday, September 17th, running through October, 2010. Tickets start at $43, with student and under 30 discounts available. Rush tickets are $20. Show times are 7:30 pm Tuesday through Saturday, with a 2:00 pm Sunday matinee and alternating Saturday 2:00 pm and Sunday 7:30 pm performances. See the show calendar http://www.pcs.org/sunset/ for the complete performance schedule.
 
There's no worse sin a Hollywood actress can commit than the sin of getting older. For fading silent film star Norma Desmond, life after the silver screen was a forced retreat into a luxurious Sunset Boulevard mansion, left alone with her memories, a monkey and a butler named Max. Enter the handsome but destitute young writer Joe Gillis, on the lam from the repo man and looking for anything that might keep his belly full and his car off the street for more than a day.  As she draws him into a scheme to re-launch her film career (and simultaneously lures him into her bed) she spins a web of jealous, defiant illusions that ultimately ensnares them both.
 
Billy Wilder once said of Sunset Boulevard, the blockbuster movie classic that launched William Holden's career and re-launched Gloria Swanson's,
 
"It should be an opera. After all, what is Norma if not a dethroned queen?"
 
In the hands of Andrew Lloyd Webber, that's exactly what you get- a big, bold, pop opera bursting with memorable songs and luscious Hollywood production numbers. It may be the pictures that got small, but in the musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard, Norma is still BIG BIG BIG.
 
Enriching the experience of the performance for audiences will be the following pre-and post-show events:
 
 Emily Beleele (last seen in Gypsy at Lakewood Center for the Arts) provides pre-show live music in the Armory Café Saturdays at 5:30 pm throughout the run of Sunset Boulevard. 
 
PCS will transform the lobby staircase into Norma's iconic mansion and use it as a runway for fashion from the silent film era into the "talkies" with this series of Wednesday pre-show fashion show cases from Portland's vintage fashion community. Wednesdays 9/29, 10/6 & 10/13 at 7:05pm

On October 3rd following the 2pm performance, the Oregon Psychoanalytic Center, will put theater on the analyst's couch and the audience in the conversational driver's seat.  A lively post-matinee show discussion will focus on the psychological themes and issues in Sunset Boulevard (how crazy WAS she? Really?) With guest moderator Lee Shersow, MD. 

The music for Sunset Boulevard was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton. The musical is based on the 1950 Billy Wilder film Sunset Boulevard, which singlehandedly revived Gloria Swanson's career and solidified the creepy/fascinating mythos of the Hollywood has-been.

Photo Credit: Owen Carey