Danny Mac talks ahead of his performance in Sunset Boulevard which stops off in Birmingham this month...

“Look at this street. All cardboard, all hollow, all phony. All done with mirrors. I like it better than any street in the world.”

So says the starry-eyed Betty Schaeffer as she walks through a Paramount Pictures set in Billy Wilder’s iconic 1950 film, Sunset Boulevard. Artifice, fantasy and the blurring of boundaries between truth and fiction are at the heart of this unsettling story, in both its original screen incarnation and in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s later musical adaptation. And with the help of highly stylised set design, director Nikolai Foster adds another layer to the story’s self-awareness in an innovative new production coming to Birmingham Hippodrome this month. 

It’s often said that cinema has something of a dreamlike quality, and in Sunset Boulevard, fading silent film star Norma Desmond is proud of offering audiences “new ways to dream”. But not everyone in the show is as enamoured of Hollywood make-believe as Betty and Norma... As the down-and-out scriptwriter Joe Gillis, Danny Mac views the glamour of the studios with an ironic, disillusioned detachment, understanding and acknowledging the dark side of the screen while almost everyone else is dazzled by its light. 

“It’s such a fantastic story about the human condition, especially in the world we live in now, where fame and celebrity are so big and bright and tragic,” he says. “It’s horrible. In the title song, I have to sing all these words that sum up the industry - ‘twisting, tempting, headline, jackpot, frenzied, brutal, ruthless and lethal’. I’ve spent quite a lot of time in LA over the last two or three years, and even in 2017, it seems a lot like the place that’s been projected in this show.”

Sunset Boulevard follows the story of an accidental encounter which comes to change Joe’s life forever. On the run from debt collectors, he parks his car in the driveway of a mysterious old mansion, which turns out to be the home of former screen queen Norma Desmond. Since the advent of the ‘talkies’, she’s been out of work, abandoned by a once adoring public. In her loneliness, she manipulates Joe into moving in with her, first offering him work on a script she’s written, before emotionally blackmailing him into a more disturbingly intense relationship. 

“As soon as I read the script, I thought, I know who Joe is and where he’s at. I can just feel the frustration that he has, and I love him for it, for every flaw that he has. He does a lot of breaking the fourth wall, but it’s not like he’s playing the audience. He’s a writer, and it feels almost like he’s typing the story out - as he tells it, you can imagine it in courier type. It’s strange because when Joe speaks to the audience, the lights are right on him, so I can’t see anyone. But I quite like the idea of him just saying these words into a black hole and never really knowing if anyone is listening. When you think about it, that’s what all writers do, just hoping one day someone will pick it up.”

Working closely with designer Colin Richmond, Nikolai Foster has created a world for his production in which the sense of unreality is heightened. Lights and cameras follow characters around and scene changes are deliberately drawn attention to, rather than disguised. In classic Hollywood style, driving scenes combine projected footage with just a dashboard, seat and windscreen standing in for a whole car - the rest filled in with cheap wood stamped with ‘Property of Paramount’.

Meanwhile, Norma’s Beverley Hills mansion is the only place where things are almost naturalistic. While the outlandishness of both the house itself and her bizarre, reclusive life within it seem like something from a film, the contrast between how scenes play out here and what’s happening outside at once serves as a cruel reminder of the life she’s been shut out from, and reflects her own inability or refusal to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not.

“I don’t think Sunset Boulevard’s ever been conceived like this before. Making grand, realistic sets is beautiful, but it doesn’t fully capture the dark side of the story the way this does. It’s like two parallel universes, showing you how the audience can just switch on and off from what is a horrific reality for Norma. And there are lines in the show that parallel that - there’s a bit where Joe says, ‘One day this will end, it isn’t real.’ He’s talking about his life and his world, but as he says it, I turn round to the set and you can see that’s not real either, so it works on so many levels.”

Of course, Danny himself isn’t entirely in the dark about celebrity culture and everything that comes with it. But unlike Norma, he’s someone who’s resisted its allure. His dance moves might have caused a stir in Strictly, but he’s never been interested in pursuing stardom. 

“I’ve been very fortunate in my career, but I think it’s been quite well-documented that the whole celebrity thing has never really sat well with me. Doing Strictly was interesting for me and I’m glad I did it, because I learned a lot and had the best time of my life on it. But all I really want is to be an actor and do a great job at that.”

Happily, Sunset Boulevard is giving him plenty of room to stretch himself as a performer.

“This has been such a brilliant creative process, definitely the most wonderful experience I’ve had as an actor so far. It’s the first show I’ve been involved with where I’m proud of it to the point that I don’t feel like I need other people to tell me it’s good. I really hope other people like it, of course, but I love it anyway because it feels like our baby. I lose myself in this show. I’ve never done that before. It’s completely engulfing, walking on stage and becoming someone else. I don’t even think about Danny until the curtain comes down.
 
Sunset Boulevard shows at Birmingham Hippodrome Monday 13 to Saturday 18 November.

Interview by Heather Kincaid