By James Hadley in London

By James Hadley in London

A critically acclaimed revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard is currently playing at the Comedy Theatre in London's West End. The production is directed by Craig Revell-Horwood (best known for being a dismissive judge on the 'Dancing with the Stars' TV show), and transferred to the West End from the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, Berkshire.

The Watermill has developed a high profile for a regional theatre, and is one of only five regional venues in the UK who are funded by the Arts Council to tour their productions around the country.

Since 1998, musical theatre has been a strong strand within their programme, with three productions transferring to the West End since then, and their 2004 production of 'Sweeney Todd' going as far afield as Broadway (albeit with a new American cast). That's not bad for a theatre seating just 220 in a converted mill!

Due to their limited resources (like most regional theatres), the way the Watermill manages to produce high quality musical productions with a limited potential audience size is to cast actors who can also double as the musicians for the production. This approach was followed in the West End transfer of 'Sunset Boulevard', and, seen in a larger venue with raised audience expectations, it definitely comes across as more artistic innovation than compromise.

I hadn't seen this sort of doubling in a production before, and had presumed it would have an adverse effect on either the singing or musicianship of the performers, but I was wrong. Not only did the score sound fantastic, the playing of it felt more theatrical and integrated into the experience of the show than I had ever seen before.

Much of the time, actors are playing instruments sitting down on the side of the stage when they're not required by the scene being acted centrestage, but often they will have their instruments on them while performing in character, perhaps saying a line and then playing a few bars of music. This would be distracting were it not for the innovative ways the playing is integrated so as to work like an extension of each character's persona or a way to explore a relationship dynamic. A love scene in which the lovers dueted on their respective wind instruments in between singing the verses created a lovely portrait of their relationship, for instance. And a party scene in which the frenetic social interactions were augmented by the business of playing instruments as guests moved around also enhanced the atmosphere of the scene.

When 'Sunset Boulevard' premiered in the West End, back in 1993, there were some criticism about the opulence of the production - with its huge staircase for silent movie star Norma Desmond to make grand entrances on, and it was one of the more expensive shows of the time.

So it's impressive to see this pared-down production - whose set consists of little more than a wrought iron spiral staircase, potted palms and a huge backdrop of Norma in her youthful heyday - working so well; even better than the original production according to some. Lead actor Kathryn Evans makes a fine Norma Desmond, and the vulnerability of the character, plus the script's human scale concerns, are surely more affecting than they would have been against more oppulent production values.

The production is a fine argument for the artistic as well as financial merits of boutique productions of musicals, such as are too rarely seen in New Zealand, where staging a musical can be so prohibitively expensive.