Nicole Scherzinger and Hannah Yun Chamberlain (projected on the screen L to R), with Tom Francis (seated) in Sunset Blvd.

I first encountered Sunset Blvd. through a touring production starring Petula Clark in the late 1990s. More than any aspect of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score, I remember the grandeur of the production: the opulent staircase floating in the middle of Norma Desmond’s mansion; the eye-catching wardrobe of caftans and turbans for the leading lady; the faithful re-creation of a 1950s Hollywood backlot. It wasn’t until years later, when I saw Billy Wilder’s original film, that I realized the material is a merciless skewering of the movie industry’s mystique rather than a celebration of its excesses.

Jamie Lloyd, who directs the stripped-down revival of the musical that opened recently on Broadway after a successful run in London, won’t let his audience forget that fact. His production removes any semblance of Tinseltown glitz—Soutra Gilmour’s scenic design consists primarily of gray and black walls, adding the occasional chair—and replaces it with predatory cameras that stalk the stage, capturing the minutiae of each performance and scenario. (The video design and cinematography are by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom.) On its face this might seem gimmicky, a trope already employed in dozens of productions by Ivo Van Hove and Simon Stone, but it captures an element of the story that ultimately teases and unsettles the viewer.

Sunset Blvd. concerns itself not just with cinema as an industry but the progress of the genre. Norma Desmond (Nicole Scherzinger), the faded star at its center, thrived in the days of silent film, where the exaggerated close-up brought her international acclaim. Now she feels that she can be herself only when she’s larger than life. Typically, this might be conveyed through costuming; here, also designed by Gilmour, Scherzinger spends the entire production in a black slip dress, her long dark hair unburdened by the typical turban. Instead, the camera placed inches from her face communicates not just her outsized emotions and limitless sense of longing, but the feeling that in every moment of her life, she plays a character that she invented.

It’s a bold choice, supported by Scherzinger’s go-for-broke performance. Watching her compact image grow in size as it was projected on the towering screen affixed to the stage’s back wall, I frequently thought of the cinema-studies concept of photogénie, the act of private communion between a spectator and an actor as mediated through the camera lens. Lloyd both introduces this concept to the theater and simultaneously subverts it, allowing you to focus on the filmed figure and the actual performance in front of you in real time. It feels intimate and scary, minimalist and maximalist all at once, and it suits perfectly the tone of the material and its current conception.

It doesn’t always work. In the London production, the major point of focus surrounded the title number, which Joe Gillis (Tom Francis) performed while touring the streets surrounding the theater. He does the same gimmick here—albeit mostly sequestered in Shubert Alley—but that’s exactly what it feels like: a gimmick. Likewise, some visual gags come across as unnecessarily arch, including references to the show’s composer and the leading lady’s former career as lead singer of The Pussycat Dolls. Despite these elements, though, the bold choices primarily pay off.

Sunset Blvd. remains a musical at the end of the day, and Lloyd doesn’t shirk his responsibilities in that category. Choreographer Fabian Aloise’s excellent work with the ensemble further buffets the idea of Hollywood as an insidious industry—the clean, individual lines of the background dancers morph into an overwhelming massed body, which seems at regular intervals to overwhelm and absorb Joe. Adam Fisher’s sound design renders every word extraordinarily clear, from whispered dialogue to belted lyrics, and the romantic texture of Lloyd Webber’s score is handled with gusto by conductor Alan Williams and the nineteen-piece orchestra.

Scherzinger conceives of Norma as a classically enigmatic celebrity. You can feel you know everything about her while at the same time wondering whether her every breath is an act. Likely, both are true. Her interactions with Francis’s Joe—teasing one moment, malicious the next—suggest a person untethered from reality, truly alive and understandable only in her own mind. Her soaring voice suits the anthemic nature of the score, though she avoids making every sweeping ballad sound the same: “With One Look” emerges with a daring sense of innocence, “New Ways to Dream” with a heartbreaking resignation. “As If We Never Said Goodbye” earned a partial standing ovation at the performance I attended—I didn’t partake, but I get it.

Francis brings a surprising innocence to Joe, a character usually portrayed as a hard-boiled cynic. In his first encounter with Norma, you can still see the idealistic bent that brought him to Hollywood in the first place. It makes him a natural complement to Grace Hodgett Young’s Betty Schaefer, and their tentative courtship blossoms with sweet authenticity. David Thaxton is appropriately imposing as Norma’s mysterious manservant, Max von Mayerling.

This Sunset Blvd. might not please those who come to the material seeking a sense of glamor, whether real or imagined. But as an inventive work of theater, it will surely give the right audiences, to borrow a phrase, new ways to dream.