Moulin Rouge begins before it begins. On a stage artfully designed to look like a combination of a Valentine’s Day card, a red-light district, and a boudoir, a well-dressed man emerges, staring out into the audience. Beautiful women in minimal dress bend, gaze, and arch.
As audience members, we feel both that we’re being presented gifts of flesh and that we are those gifts; there’s something unsettling about the way the performers stare out toward us. This is Paris’s famous Moulin Rouge, or a dream of it, one in which every appetite can be indulged. Can love flourish in such a place?
The musical, based on Baz Luhrmann’s overly caffeinated 2001 movie, sets out to answer that question. Moulin Rouge: The Musical! is onstage through February 2nd as part of Broadway Grand Rapids’s 2024-2025 season, providing plenty of opportunity for audience members to step out of the cold and into the warmth of bohemian passion.
Christian Douglas plays Christian, an earnest young songwriter. Having come to Paris to make his name and find someone to love, he soon finds himself in the company of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Nick Rashad Burroughs) and Santiago, an Argentinian (Danny Burgos).
Toulouse-Lautrec was a famous painter; you’ve seen his work. That work is incidental to the musical, however, which uses his name as a gesture toward bohemian artistry in general; the real story lies with Christian, and the woman he falls for: gorgeous Satine (Arianna Rosario), the belle of the cabaret’s glittering ball.
Characters quickly align into types. There's Christian, the young idealist; paired with Satine, the whore with a heart of gold (forgive the language, but it’s what would have been said at the time). Then we have the Duke of Monroth (Andrew Brewer), a cruel and controlling man, foil to Christian; along with Harold Zidler (Robert Petkoff), the impresario trying to keep it all together. The simplicity of the characters can be a real virtue; La Boheme’s Mimi isn’t complex either. At times here, though, it blunts the emotional impact. Satine, who feels like a real person, is an outlier, and as much of that realness comes from Rosario’s performance as from the book itself.
Christian, urged on by his new friends, approaches Satine, hoping to have her star in a musical production created by the trio. Mistaking him for the duke, she agrees to. In a nicely ironic twist, she throws herself at him for pragmatic reasons—money, of course—but finds herself quickly falling for him. But her confusion over his identity can’t last. Will love survive truth?
As is often the case with jukebox musicals, the real draw is in the spectacle and in the music. There’s plenty of great spectacle on offer. Elegantly and sometimes thrillingly, the show offers up the interior of the Moulin Rouge, Satine’s bedroom, a street at night, the world of the fashionable elite, and more. The costumes are gorgeous, whether revealing or concealing. Lighting unobtrusively adds to the atmosphere.
Among the most effective images is one of the simplest: Satine high in the air, sitting on a swing, something as evocative of the circus as of the cabaret scene.
The music? Like that in the movie, it’s music you’re likely to know, sometimes combined into medleys or mashups; sometimes delivered faithfully; sometimes approached in new ways, allowing us to hear it again for something like the first time. Several songs from the movie are here (including Elton John’s simple, wonderful “Your Song” and a medley of numbers with “love” in the chorus), but several new ones are, too.
Highlights: Satine’s performance of Katy Perry’s “Fireworks,” an anthem whose power comes more from its melody than its lyrics; The Police’s “Roxanne” (sadly, practical, hurt Satine feels she does have to put on the red light); Adele’s powerhouse “Rolling In The Deep”. I loved the Latin-tinged update of “Bad Romance,” one of the great pop songs of the 21st century, which opens the second half. (It didn’t hurt that it included Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” which remained my ringtone for years).
Focusing on Santiago and his amour, “Bad Romance” isn’t strictly necessary for the overall story, but that doesn’t matter; it’s a blast. Almost is good as Satine’s mashup of ““Diamonds Are Forever,” “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” “Material Girl,” and “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” And Sia’s “Chandelier,” here the soundtrack to Christian’s evening with absinthe, is fabulous.
In the end, Moulin Rouge: The Musical! is a fairy tale, a dream of bohemian idealism that never quite made its way to the waking world. If it never quite manages to get under your skin, it nevertheless offers compensations, from its expertly-made world to those moments when you realize you’ve been nodding your head and tapping your chair, totally lost in the music.
Moulin Rouge: The Musical!
Broadway Grand Rapids
Jan. 21-Feb. 2
https://broadwaygrandrapids.com/moulin-rouge
