Trepidatious Patti LuPone Raves About Broadway’s New ‘Sunset Blvd.’

Last month, Patti LuPone appeared on The View and seemed more than a little apprehensive about seeing the new Broadway production of Sunset Blvd., the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that LuPone once (and briefly) headed.

LuPone, who was fired by Lloyd Webber shortly after creating the show’s Norma Desmond in the original London production back in 1993, told The View cohosts she was “curious” to see the Jamie Lloyd-directed production, especially because “it’s a lumbering musical, it always has been, so I’m curious to see what he’s going to do to make it less lumbering.”

Apparently, he’s done a lot.

“I loved it,” LuPone told Frank DiLella, the anchor and host of New York’s Spectrum News’ On Stage program, in a recorded voice message. DiLella shared the recording on Instagram (listen below).

“I saw Sunset Blvd. last night,” LuPone says. “Now, I went in with trepidation because I have strong feelings about the show, not what happened to me in the show, but the show, period. I loved this production. I thought Nicole [Scherzinger] and Tom [Francis] were stunning. I thought Nicole was unbelievable. She broke my heart. She is a force.

“I thought the cast was fantastic, the lighting,” she continued. “The use of the filming was something that I questioned because I don’t know where I am. Am I at a movie or at the theater? This worked brilliantly. The whole thing. The whole thing. I was energized when I left the theater. I loved it.”

LuPone’s departure from London’s Sunset Boulevard (the title was not abbreviated then) was one of the hottest theater stories of the early 1990s, and led to a lawsuit that Lloyd Webber settled for an undisclosed amount. However much it was, the payoff was enough to fund what LuPone famously called her home’s “Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool.”

Against that backdrop, LuPone’s comments on The View seemed to carry some serious baggage, especially when she told Joy Behar, who had mentioned the new production’s good reviews, “Well, we’ll see. There’s no accounting for taste.”

The new Sunset Blvd. opened October 20 at the St. James Theatre on Broadway to near-universal glowing reviews. The good vibes were dampened when a seemingly pro-Trump social media post by Scherzinger was met with online backlash from many in the theater community (she later wrote, “Many presumptions are being drawn, which do not reflect who I am, what I stand for, or who I voted for.”)

Listen to LuPone’s rave below.