Patti LuPone Gives Her Thoughts on 'Sunset Blvd.'

When Patti LuPone visited "The View" last month, she was "curious" about seeing the current version of "Sunset Boulevard" that came to Broadway from London starring Nicole Scherzinger in a stripped-down version directed by James Lloyd, appropriately titled "Sunset Blvd."

Remember it was LuPone who originated the role of Norma Desmond in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adaptation of Billy Wilder's 1950 film noir when it first opened in London in 1993. LuPone and the extravagant production, which at one point had Desmond's enormous Hollywood mansion that rises up to reveal another set beneath, received mixed reviews. LuPone was locked into bringing the show to New York, but in a less-than-graceful move, Webber fired her, brought Betty Buckley in to replace her, and signed Glenn Close to take over the Broadway version. Humiliated, LuPone sued and received $1 million in a settlement, which she spent on building a swimming pool at her Connecticut home that she famously called her "Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool."

She also told "The View," as reported by Deadline, that she thought it was "a lumbering musical, it always has been, so I'm curious to see what he's (Lloyd's) going to do to make it less lumbering." And when told by Joy Behar that the new production received nothing but glowing reviews, LuPone said, "There's no accounting for taste."

It turns out Lloyd did something right. "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.

"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."

In Lloyd's production, video and film elements are used instead of the mammoth sets that defined the original production. He also cut a number of songs and trimmed the book with Webber's permission. Instead of an array of period costumes that LuPone wore, Scherzinger performs the role in a black slip and takes her curtain call covered in blood after she murders her gigolo bf played by Tom Francis.

"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."