For those still seeking out a post-lockdown hedonistic high, Moulin Rouge! (based, of course, on Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film) makes a brave attempt at scratching that itch. The film is an alchemical delight – romantic and craven, tawdry and glamorous. Moulin Rouge! The Musical isn’t quite as potent, nor does it have that edge of seediness that makes Luhrmann’s film so intriguing, instead investing in a level of opulence designed to overstimulate. Designer Derek McLane covers the Piccadilly Theatre’s walls in crushed red velvet, a working windmill spins in the royal box, and a main character makes her entrance on a rhinestone-encrusted swing that is lowered from the rafters. It is ostentatious, absurd, and completely ravishing to look at.
The plot itself is paper-thin, a melodrama encrusted in sequins: famed performer and courtesan Satine falls in love with penniless composer Christian, but is forced by the Moulin Rouge’s commander in chief, Harold Zidler, to pander to a rich but evil duke, who is the club’s only hope of survival. Subtlety is hardly the name of the game: Satine’s consumption is rapidly signposted via the theatrical device of Chekhov’s Ominous Tummy Ache. Really, Moulin Rouge! tends to be at its most enjoyable when it eschews such concepts as “characterisation” and “narrative” and throws itself entirely into its jukebox musical credentials, with a bevy of mash-up pop numbers that teeter on the edge of sonic blasphemy.
