Moulin Rouge The Musical, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca
Those Belle Époque bohemians sure know how to party. Your retinas will be dazzled the moment you enter the theatre. And that, mes amis, isn’t going to stop, or even pause, for the next two-and-a-half hours of Moulin Rouge, the glittering, sexy, gloriously gaudy and lavish 2019 Broadway jukebox musical that’s arrived on tour at the Jube.
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In the jukebox archive there are musicals that are ingenious about either scavenging familiar pop songs to paste into some sort of plot, à la Rock of Ages, or making up a thinnish drama to suit the song list (we’re looking at you Mamma Mia!). Has there ever been a jukebox musical so crammed with pop songs, 75 or more (about love, the falling into, the loss of, the hopes for, etc.) on a hyper-adrenalized spectrum from Offenbach to Beyoncé, Lady Gaga to Piaf to Katy Perry (sometimes characters have whole medleys as their calling cards)? The music credits take up nearly two pages of the program, in print so fine you’d need a magnifying glass if you were keen to nail them down.
Justin Levine, a virtuoso among music supervisors, has evidently updated the list with new music since 2019. And the packed and enraptured opening night crowd laughed with pleasure every time they identified a song.
That’s the thing about the pop repertoire; it doesn’t take massive contortions to repurpose love and love-lorn songs for a story like this one. Thank you Puccini. Based on the 2001 Baz Luhrmann film, which borrowed its story from La Bohème, Moulin Rouge the musical is your invitation to the fantasy version of the demi-mondaine Parisian nightclub and courtesan hang, c. 1899. In Alex Timbers’ production, reproduced for the Broadway Across Canada tour, it comes to us as a giant glowing red velvet valentine in Derek McLane’s stunning design, which unfolds as a series of heart-shaped prosceniums draped in red, that frame heart-shaped perspective projections of Paris roof-tops or street scenes from time to time.
Ah yes, the story. To cut to the chase, it’s a love triangle, with a bit of capitalism/arts push-and-pull thrown in. Christian (Ryan Vasquez), a poor and naive composer from Ohio who arrives in the City of Light to make his fortune with his tunes, has chance encounters with two crazy fin-de-siècle artistes, an Argentine tango specialist and gigolo (Danny Burgos) and the artist Toulouse-Lautrec (Kevyn Morrow) who are creating a show, Bohemian Rhapsody, for the Moulin Rouge. Which is how Christian falls in love with the establishment’s star attraction Satine (Gabriela Carrillo), a consumptive singer-dancer who’s being pursued by the ruthlessly libidinous, and well-heeled, aristocrat the Duke of Monroth (Andrew Brewer), who’s being pursued by the seedy/glam Moulin Rouge master of ceremonies Harold Zidler (Bobby Daye) as a potential patron to stave off bankruptcy.
Anyhow, we know that Christian and Satine are deeply, madly, in forever love mainly because they keep singing songs about exactly that. But before that, the opening sequence, which introduces us to the showbiz world in question, is a big, splashy, transporting production number from a cast with legs for days, putting Lady Marmalade to good use.
Moulin Rouge The Musical, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
The real takeaway? The visuals, which are a knockout. It’s the moment to salute the endless array of Catherine Zuber’s extravagantly beautiful costumes, which memorably reinvent underwear, and then keep going, with ravishing frocks and topcoats, hats and feathers. And Sonya Tayeh’s choreography never stops being a cleverly allusive marriage of fin-de-siècle and contemporary, delivered by a come-hither cast of great dancers.
In classic fashion, at the outset, everyone’s saying hey, great, just wait till you meet Satine. And sure enough, Satine, the vedette played by the stunning, strong- and supple-voiced Carrillo who’s perfect for a role that includes torchy songs and ballads, knows how to make an entrance. She arrives on a trapeze, a vision of corseted sparkle, singing Diamonds Are Forever, Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend, Material Girl, and other diamantine ditties.
Andrew Brewer in Moulin Rouge The Musical, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
Christian Vasquez, also a terrific singer, won’t be everyone’s idea of a poor boy from the Ohio sticks since he looks as well turned-out as a barrister. Daye is terrific as the ingratiating MC whose good humour is a veneer for showbiz desperation. Burgos and Morrow as Santiago and Toulouse-Lautrec are excellent as ‘colourful characters’. The former gets a sizzling tango (with stage partner Kaitlin Mesh) as the moody Act II opener. The latter, who has a lovely rich voice, has a wistful Nature Boy number in which he sings about his big regret vis-à-vis Satine. He gave up his romantic hopes, he says, as a disabled person (he has a cane for heaven’s sake).
As I say, the design is spectacular, along with Justin Townsend’s striking lighting, a melodrama in itself in painterly images in backstage and onstage scenes, romantic tête-à-tètes in Satine’s boudoir, smoky Montmartre cafes.… Bohemian poverty never looked so good, or so expensive. And it comes with a terrific orchestra, too.
Moulin Rouge The Musical, Broadway Across Canada Touring. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
It’s all so excessive and driven (and OK, a wee bit tiring) you might wonder whether it’s having its gateau and eating it too: there’s a sassy hint of send-up in its prolonged matching of period setting and modern songs, especially in the playfulness of Act I before things get, you know, tragic in the longueurs of Act II. The alternate lyrics to The Hills Are Alive (“with the sounds of the proletariat”) are a case in point. The creators of Moulin Rouge, including playwright John Logan (of Red fame), are smart. Harold talks cheerfully about “dire and glorious poverty” — and then there’s a big catchy “shut up and dance with me” dance number.
Sometimes the expert if way over-ample theatrical glitz and beauteous stagecraft wrap themselves around the music (or is it vice versa?) so uncannily you have to give your head a shake. The lurid red lighting of the number set to Roxanne, amplifying Satine’s ambiguous entertainer/courtesan career, is a knock-out. Talk about burning down the house.
And that’s how it is when you come to the cabaret (oops, wrong musical). Give yourself over to a hothouse over-the-top fantasy spun from the music engraved in your brain. As the MC says at the start, Moulin Rouge isn’t a place, it’s “a state of mind.”
REVIEW
Moulin Rouge The Musical
Book by: John Logan
Directed by: Alex Timbers
Starring: Gabriela Carrillo, Ryan Vasquez, Bobby Daye, Kevyn Morrow, Andrew Brewer, Kaitlin Mesh, Danny Burgos
Where: Jubilee Auditorium
Running: through Sunday
Tickets: ticketmaster.ca
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