The latest revival of Sunset Blvd—Glossy harsh and aggressively meta – applies multiple shades of lipstick to a pig. “Shades” are black, white and red. “Pig” is a musical that may be one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's better works, but it remains a bloated, subtle piece of pop melodrama. Director Jamie Lloyd and his dapper design team immerse Webber's adaptation of the classic 1994 film in a dizzying zone of inky surfaces and white highlights, all shrouded in perpetual clouds of stage fog. Soutra Gilmour's fashionable costumes are as monochromatic as her sparse set – essentially a cavernous camera obscura. When the death threat arises, lighting designer Jack Knowles bathes the stage in a scarlet light. By the end of the plot (mild spoiler), fallen star Norma Desmond (Nicole Scherzinger) is a gothic vision: glowing olive skin, black silk underskirt and blood-stained neck. What's remarkable about this brutally regimented palette is how it helps distract from the music.

Admittedly, I am a Sondheim Man and Webber's syrupy, pounding melodies and bawdy power ballads – which require equally hackneyed lyrics –I'm bored. His musical storytelling moves between operetta and English music hall; It's bloated, repetitive, and allergic to nuanced characterization (not to mention genuine emotion). At least with Sunset BlvdAuthors and copywriters Christopher Hampton and Don Black (talented professionals) had excellent foundations to build on. Billy Wilder's love letter to Hollywood was engraved with a poison pen, a sharp dance between satire and compassion in his twisted portrait of Norma Desmond, the silent film queen deposed from her throne by talkies. Reclusive and occasionally suicidal, Norma lives in a celluloid nermland where she remains forever young in moving images. When down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (Tom Francis) accidentally pulls into the driveway of Norma's spooky mansion on the titular street, a deadly game of mutual exploitation begins.

Aside from true Webber fans (apparently they exist), the big draw is Nicole Scherzinger, ex-Pussycat Doll and pop icon from the first decade of this century. The first glimpse of our leading lady is a visual trick: as the metallic beaded curtain opens during Webber's crashing and swelling overture, we think it is Norma, circling in the shadows at the edge of the stage. The character is actually Hannah Yun Chamberlain, the strikingly beautiful dancer who portrays the young Norma. Chamberlain is effectively Scherzinger's body double and reappears frequently, at one point dancing with her older self. (Remember The substanceminus green goosebumps and splinters of the spine.) How fitting: a stunt norm for a stunt production.

Lloyd directs most of his actors into a tense, frontal, expressionless posture. While Joe Gillis, Tom Francis (who plays Jeremy Allen White) seethes and paces, clenched, fists in his pockets. It was a relief when Francis was allowed to gesture; I began to wonder how his character typed. Gillis is broke. Goons try to repossess his car while he makes his rounds at Paramount, harassing Hollywood sharks and minnows. Perhaps to reinforce the concept of Tinseltown as a place that feeds youth into a meat grinder, Lloyd casts the ensemble with young artists, a Generation Z phalanx of grim-faced choristers and supporting actors.

Shortly after Joe washes up on Norma's shores, he emerges into her crazy universe full of secrets and lies. We meet a crazy German servant named Max (David Thaxton) and learn about a recently deceased chimpanzee. There's also Norma's lurid and overwritten script about Salomé, which Joe wants to pick up for her big return to the cinema. When Joe asks how old the character is, Norma casually replies, “Sixteen.” Scherzinger looks great for her age, but still gets the laughs.

The leading actress will grow on you in her Broadway debut. Unlike the audience, who stood and screamed every time Scherzinger performed one of Norma's obligatory, overheated ballads (“With One Look,” “As If We Never Said Goodbye”), I went in with minimal expectations. Luckily, Scherzinger owns her scenes – on stage and in gargantuan proportions on the 27-by-23-inch LCD screen, which is fed live video from actors strapped to camera units.

Scherzinger may be hesitant and stiff at first, but soon she's dancing in front of the camera and pouting like a boisterous teenager with her first TikTok account. When Norma talks to Joe about astrology, she adopts a goofy Valley Girl singing boy. Is Norma aware of her eccentric excesses, or are Scherzinger and Lloyd commenting on it? The anachronistic, self-ironic gestures also extend to the choreography. Fabian Aloise gives Scherzinger cheeky quotes from the Pussycat Dolls' synchronized strutting. Scrawled somewhere in my notes is “Norma twerks?” If only that weren't terribly outdated postmodernThat's how I would describe Scherzinger's delightful pastiche.

There's an obscene amount of eye candy on display – including the outstanding work of Francis and the ensemble with the second act opener, which takes them (on video) through the bowels of the St. James Theater and onto the streets in a virtuoso single tracking shot . The actual song “Sunset Boulevard” is incredibly stupid (“Sunset Boulevard / Frenzied boulevard / Swamped with every kind of false emotion”). But the live video sequence is a blast, poking fun at the show as Francis and ensemble members roam the street looking sexy and cool, accompanied by a man in a monkey outfit (shout out to the dead chimpanzee). Most of Webber's hits featured fancy stage effects: phantomThe crashing chandelier; a huge flying tire comes in Cats; Sunset Blvd premiered with a villa rolling toward the audience. Removing clunky set pieces from a Webber musical is like reading a Michael Bay script for its urban wit. Here Lloyd delivers the perfect spectacle for our mediatized, homogenized age: digital projection, dematerialized stage sets, uniform couture.

All the lush black-and-white video, the blinking backstage, the blank expression in the fuck-me boots—that's it Fun. I never thought I would enjoy an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. (Even this summer's queer ballroom makeover by Cats was, well, Cats.) Lloyd's camp and yet surgical production merges form and content: it is the resurrection of a faded (kitsch) icon, a critique of the invasive camera, a cosplay of the BDSM rituals of celebrity and fan base. The way Scherzinger surrounds Norma in giant neon quotation marks, the entire production seems to admit that the entire musical is garbage. What happens when you dress up trash as art and shove a camera in its face? These twenty-foot-tall faces—coldly sensual carved images—demand your abject adoration. There is a fine line (movie screen thin) between glamor and horror. “We have given the world new opportunities to dream,” sings a delighted Norma. Lloyd finds new ways to give us nightmares; Who wants to wake up?

Sunset Blvd | 2 hours 30 minutes. One break. | St James Theater | 246 West 44th St. | Buy tickets here