Finally, a killer ‘Sunset Boulevard’ with the perfect Norma Desmond

LONDON — “Let’s get a look at you!” exclaims Hawkeye, the back-lot spotlight operator, as Norma Desmond, in the form of drop-dead dazzling Nicole Scherzinger, stands before us like a haunted moth, drawn to the all-consuming flame.

The powerful white light fixes on her slender, dancer’s figure, cloaked in a satiny black shift, and the audience at the Savoy Theatre is now the moth to her flame. What happens next in director Jamie Lloyd’s killer revival of “Sunset Boulevard” — killer because it obliterates the memory of all other versions of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical — is a rendition of “As If We Never Said Goodbye” that accomplishes the aim of theater at its devilish best. It slays you, too.