Sunset Boulevard

“The shows warmest reception was reserved for the set-designer John Napier… He said staging Sunset was "the hardest thing I've ever done"… For Sunset he decided the magnificent gothic-Victorian-baroque mansion inhabited by the ageing start, Norma Desmond, would be "Hollywood Mad". But how could he get there after a sequence involving a studio back-lot, a car chase and a deserted garage complete with vintage car?.... His coup lies in making the story's transitions -so easily done in the original 1950 film - work seamlessly on stage despite tons of fallible machinery and sliding pallets that shot off in the wrong directions at three times their normal speed in the technical rehearsals.”

Susannah Herbert, The Daily Telegraph

4th July 1993