Director Jamie Lloyd’s new Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Blvd. starring Olivier Award winner and Grammy Award nominee Nicole Scherzinger as ‘Norma Desmond' opened tonight Sunday,

Nicole Scherzinger is ready for her close-up. In the early aughts, the pop chanteuse scored global fame (and seven Top 20 hits) as the de facto leader of the Pussycat Dolls, which she then tried to springboard into a solo career.

As she sings the final verse of "As If We Never Said Goodbye," one of two showstopping numbers that bolster the musical "Sunset Boulevard," Nicole Scherzinger turns her face skyward. Her architectural cheekbones reflect the glare of the spotlight,

When Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage adaptation of the 1950 Billy Wilder film Sunset Boulevard premiered in London in 1993 and on Broadway the following year, it was arguably the last gasp of the ‘80s megamusical aesthetic - at least until shows like The Lion King and Wicked came along to tweak the formula.

It’s the pictures that got small.” Perhaps the pictures have always been too small, if they have no place for a woman like Nicole Scherzinger’s radiant Norma Desmond. In the Broadway revival of Sunset Boulevard,

There’s no more gilded cage for Norma in director Jamie Lloyd’s red-hot, straight-from-London revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s noir 1993 musical.

Wreathed in swirling stage smoke, edging towards the audience in a black slip, arms outstretched as if wanting, defying, daring, threatening and inviting us all at once, Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond isn’t kidding.