As she sings the final verse of “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” one of two showstopping numbers that bolster the musical “ Sunset Boulevard ,” Nicole Scherzinger turns her face skyward. Her architectural cheekbones reflect the glare of the spotlight, and her eyes disappear as she contorts her features into a mask of perverse pleasure. She — both the actress and the character she plays, the has-been screen legend Norma Desmond — seems, for a moment, to be inhaling not oxygen but motes of light.
Scherzinger’s performance as a fallen idol desperate to reclaim her fame is many things, among them a coming-out party for a performer whose plainly evident raw talent has long outstripped her ability to find a landing place in the entertainment industry. (Audience members will likely recall her from her role as the lead singer of the now-defunct girl group Pussycat Dolls or from her work as a reality-show judge.) It is also a capital-E Event, a thrill ride whose greatest pleasure may be that, under the direction of Jamie Lloyd , Scherzinger’s work exists within a production as bold as she is.
Norma Desmond’s problem, as she tells us upon her entrance, is that she is big, but the pictures have gotten small. No such problem here. Scherzinger and the stage she inhabits push each other to grand extremes.
The result is something like magic. Lloyd’s “Sunset Boulevard” — styled in this production as “Sunset Blvd.” — is only the latest in the British director’s.