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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Mark Fisher

Sunset Boulevard: The Backstage Cut review – does Norma Desmond really need another closeup?

Juliet Cadzow in a patterned black outfit and sunglasses holds a cigarette holder beneath ornate stone arches.
Brittle and grandiose … Juliet Cadzow as the faded silent cinema star Norma Desmond. Photograph: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

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.

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