Tony-nominated stage director Jamie Lloyd shows no signs of slowing down in the near future. His Broadway revival of “Sunset Blvd.” is one of the buzziest (and Tony-nominated) Broadway shows in recent memory, with critics praising Nicole Scherzinger’s performance as the troubled Norma Desmond. Amid its current run, he also directed Tom Hiddleston in “Much Ado About Nothing” earlier this year in London’s West End, and is gearing up for “Evita” this summer, as well as an adaptation of “Waiting for Godot,” starring Keanu Reeves, later this year.
As busy as he is, Lloyd told IndieWire that he “dedicates” his life to telling these stories in up to four productions a year. But with “Sunset,” something was different. “The moment that I was aware that it really kind of tipped into something was when everyone started dressing up as Norma Desmond at Halloween,” he told IndieWire. “People coming to the theater dressed in that black slip and covered in blood was pretty cool, and I was thinking, ‘Oh, maybe this has gone to like a different place.’”
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The current Broadway revival of Kenny Leon’s “Othello” made headlines in March for having ticket prices upwards of $1,000. Lloyd has tried to make “Sunset Blvd.” more accessible to theatergoers, though it remains a hot ticket. “It’s easier to do that in London, to be honest,” Lloyd said. “New York is an expensive city. The costs on Broadway are kind of astronomical, so that, of course, in turn raises the ticket prices.”
“What we’ve done, certainly in London, is make sure that there are very affordable access points or a range of ticket prices. On our last season, we offered 25,000 25-pound tickets. It’s about offering those tickets in really good locations in the auditorium,” he continued. “There’s no point in saying to people, ‘Hey, why don’t you just come and try theater out for the first time, see if you connect with it,’ and then you put them behind a pillar at the back at the top, and they have a really miserable experience.”
He added, “It’s best when you’ve got a generational model of people, from all lived experiences, experiencing this thing together, it’s just really exciting. It just makes the kind of atmosphere in the auditorium just really dynamic, and it’s what gets me up in the morning. Certainly, what we’ve done in the West End is try to have this real drive and intention to change the demographic of our corner. Hopefully, we can continue to look at ways of doing that on Broadway, too.”
Patti LuPone recently praised Lloyd’s “Sunset Boulevard” in a profile with Variety, saying that she likes “to see directors that have very strong, very unusual concepts. I was thrilled to death to see this production, which was a complete departure from the original, which I was in.” Though she did have, as she calls them, a couple of “quibbles”: “I would love to have seen costumes. I don’t know why they went outside on the street to sing ‘Sunset Blvd.’”
“That’s the great thing about theater and all art, isn’t it, is that it’s all so subjective,” Lloyd said. “They do wear costumes; they’re just not like the costumes that you traditionally associate with ‘Sunset.’ They’re kind of contemporary costumes, because the idea is that ostensibly it’s still set in like 1949, 1950, but no one needs to look, behave, and dress in the way that those people would.”
He continued, “It’s really about asking audiences to be co-authors and engage their imaginations and try to join in the making of the piece that they’re experiencing. And that’s likewise with the walk around, it’s like the streets of Broadway, the streets of New York, are standing in for the streets of Hollywood, for Sunset Boulevard. It’s trying to get rid of all the old-fashioned artifice of theater. If you can really connect to these roles, this material, as artists, then hopefully the aspiration is that that means that your connection with the audience will be even greater and that the audience will really feel how honest you are.”
As for whether he’ll connect with LuPone about “Evita,” in which she originated the title role, he said, “I haven’t thought about that. That’s actually a really great idea. We should definitely invite her to come and see it.”
With “Waiting for Godot,” Lloyd said that stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter invited him to meet on Zoom to get him on board to direct. For Reeves, this marks his first return to the stage since 1995, where he played Prince Hamlet in “Hamlet.” As for tailoring Reeves’ bigger-scale screen acting back to the stage, Lloyd says it’s all about “finding like your own personal connection to the role.”
“What’s so cool about them is that the play in many ways is about friendship,” he continued. “It’s about companionship that sustains you in the midst of something, in the midst of a pretty dark and bleak world and how you kind of find comfort in that. Of course, their friendship comes for free; they’ve been friends for over 40 years. They’ve got enough of an experience to draw on that. In terms of acting for screen or acting for theater. I don’t think it’s really that different. I’m not interested in the old school craft of acting. It’s all about being as honest and as intimate and as true as possible.”
As for who he would like to work with next, Lloyd said that he “would love to work with Timothée Chalamet. I would love to do his ‘Hamlet.’ Chalamet as Hamlet would be a dream come true. I’d love to work with Ayo Edebiri. I’d also love to explore some work some people again. I’ve worked with James McAvoy, I think, five or six times. On our production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ every single actor in that we’ve worked with before. There’s something really exciting about that. Going on a journey with people, you develop a shorthand and a kind of trust. It’s so immediate that you can get into that rehearsal room on day one and you’re just creating right from the off, because everyone feels really comfortable and really confident.”
“Sunset Blvd.” is currently running at the St. James Theatre in New York City through July 13.
