Written and Directed by Morag Fullarton

Review by Dominic Corr

Perth Theatre

Hollywood has never been shy about rewriting its own history, so it feels fitting that Sunset Boulevard: The Backstage Cut at Perth Theatre leans into the mythmaking with a grin, but while the players on-stage may be delivering, there’s a wobble under the weight of its own attempted cleverness. No stranger to reinventing famous tales with the air of a pastiche or parody, Morag Fullarton’s reimagining of Wilder’s classic reframes the off-camera antics of Gloria Swanson’s defining performance in Sunset Boulevarda.

This backstage melodrama, a brisk 70‑minute excavation of egos, rewrites and studio politics that shaped one of cinema’s most enduring tragedies. It is a lively conceit, and one that often charms, even if the evening sometimes feels more like a scrapbook than a fully realised interrogation; a ‘best-hits’ rather than finding its own voice.

The story unfolds as a kind of autopsy, charting how a proposed comedy morphed into a noir masterpiece, or how Mae West was initially attached, with the ensemble slipping between famous faces of actors, directors and studio figures as they reconstruct the chaos behind the camera. The structure is playful, the tone knowingly heightened, and the script peppered with nods to the industry’s habit of sanding down inconvenient truths. It is an affectionate send‑up, though one that refrains from skirting the darker implications of its own material too often.

With its faded façade, design does much of the world-building; Fraser Lappin’s set conjures dressing rooms, studio corridors and makeshift sound stages with a tactile, lived‑in glamour, that suggest ambition and desperation share the same lighting rig. Effective costumes evoke the period without tipping into parody (though the show could have done with some more), while the lighting shifts with filmic precision, slicing scenes into vignettes that echo the fractured nature of memory. The movement adds a welcome theatricality, giving the ensemble a physical vocabulary, particularly from Juliet Cadzow and Mark McDonnell that keeps the pace buoyant even when the script lingers.

It takes a presence to capture the brittle nature of Norma Desmond, and Cadzow’s take on this dream-role and crafts a delightfully arch creation, a blend of faded stardom and razor‑sharp self‑awareness that anchors the evening whenever the narrative threatens to drift. Her command of tone, oscillating between grandeur and vulnerability, gives the show its emotional ballast. Ensnared, but freely utilising the space, John Kielty, as Joe Gillis, offers a sardonic charm that cuts through the nostalgia, his dry delivery grounding the more flamboyant moments with a welcome cynicism. Filling in the gaps, and performing a plethora of character performances, Frances Thorburn and McDonnell provide nimble support, shifting between roles with comic precision and injecting the production with a sense of ensemble mischief.

Yet for all its wit, the production hesitates to follow through on the sharper edges it introduces. The show gestures toward the industry’s exploitation of ageing women, the erasure of creative labour and the casual cruelties of studio hierarchies, but these themes are sketched rather than interrogated. The result is an inconsistency, one which resonates only intermittently, its emotional stakes softened by its own affection for the material and reluctance to commit fully to parody or tribute (see the exceptional Casablanca: The Gin Joint Cut)

Still, it’s undeniably enjoyable with some stellar performances, and the audience is never left waiting for its next laugh or flourish. Sunset Boulevard: The Backstage Cut succeeds as a good‑natured tribute to Hollywood mythmaking, even if it stops short of fully dismantling the machinery it lampoons. In a cultural moment where nostalgia often threatens to eclipse critique, the production offers a reminder that the stories we inherit are rarely neutral, and that the real work lies in deciding which ones we choose to keep.

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