Thursday, March 12, 2015

Sunset Boulevard


This is probably my all-time favourite musical. Back at my days movin' furniture at the pier, I worked with Stephen Mercer. Steve and I would start work at 7am and make the changes to the displays. Since it was just he and I working, we could play our own cds over the sound system in the store. He put on the soundtrack to the Los Angeles production of Sunset Boulevard with Glenn Close and Alan Campbell. I loved it so much that I always requested that we listen to it. By the fourth time we had it on, several weeks later, I asked if he was getting tired of it. "Hello! I'm a gay man that performs in plays and my husband is a theatre director!" The first time we listened to it when it reached the part where Norma says to DeMille, "The last time I saw you, we were someplace terribly gay..." I turned to Steve and said in my Norma Desmond voice, "It was Steve and Joe's, wasn't it?!" Well, we laughed. Anyway, I think that the music of Sunset's Overture is one of the most beautiful compositions I've ever heard.

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