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Canberra Today 24°/27° | Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

‘Moulin’, the musical about to create a sensation

Alinta Chidzey (Satine) and Des Flanagan (Christian). Photo: Michelle Grace Hunder

“MOULIN Rouge! The Musical” is about to head for Sydney and it’s likely to create a sensation. 

The film version did so in 2001 when director Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce first unleashed it on the world with Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor in the romantic lead roles.

With a winning combination of theatrical spectacle, nostalgia for the can-can era in Montmartre and a saucy book drawn from some of the most recognisable songs of the 20th century, it came from an original concept of Luhrmann.

But he’s stepped aside from this show, saying: “I knew I wasn’t the right person to re-interpret something I made 20 years ago.” 

The book has been redeveloped with Luhrmann’s agreement by celebrated American screenwriter and Tony-winner, John Logan and it’s directed by American Alex Timbers. 

Under the eye of musical supervisor, arranger and lyricist, Justin Levine, who speaks of “the emotional memory I carried from songs”, it uses the same winning combination of pop songs in a period setting, retaining, Elton John’s “Your Song”, the jazz classic “Nature Boy” and David Baerwald and Kevin Gilbert’s tragic song, “Come What May”, originally intended for Luhrmann’s 1996 film, “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet”. 

The Australian cast of “Moulin Rouge! The Musical”. Photo: Michelle Grace Hunder

No prizes for spotting the origins of numbers such as “El Tango de Roxanne” and “Only Girl in a Material World”, but you can also expect to hear hints of David Bowie, Offenbach, T. Rex, U2 and Madonna as well as contemporary artists.

I saw the show in preview in Melbourne and the catchy songs were a highlight for the audience, who were constantly nudging each other in the joy of song-spotting. 

Americanised to suit its Broadway opening in 2019, the original story of a young English poet cut adrift in Paris has been tweaked slightly to become a boy from the American south.

With a “La Traviata” meets “Barnum” plot, it’s a spectacular exposé of the manipulations behind the world of stardom under the theme – “Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Love”. 

The consumptive heroine Satine, played by Alinta Chidzey, who played Mary Poppins for Free Rain Theatre in Canberra, is the classic good-hearted courtesan caught up in a world where, to support herself and her companions who’ve mostly come from the streets, is obliged to offer her charms to aristocratic patrons such as the show’s villain, The Duke, played by Andrew Cook – but even he gets to sing a Rolling Stones mashup song. 

Club impresario Harold Zidler is played by Simon Burke as an over-the-top but emotionally vulnerable entrepreneur and the other characters include a 21st-century polyglot bunch, Satine’s old friends, Santiago, played by Ryan Gonzalez, and the artist Toulouse-Lautrec played by Canberra’s Tim Omaji.

The whole production is bigger than “Ben Hur” with the stage dominated by a 5.1-metre blue elephant and draped with a bevy of full-bodied dancers who recline around the performance area when the audience comes in, ready for their showstopper, “Lady Marmalade”.

Only the young bohemian poet, Christian, played by Des Flanagan, signals innocence, even though when he opens his mouth, the words to popular songs come tumbling out.

This is “rich” theatre. It took 30 trucks to move the show from Melbourne to Sydney, including the aforementioned elephant, 12 large-scale chandeliers, 793 individual costume pieces and a life-size mill or “moulin”. 

Producers Gerry Ryan and Carmen Pavlovich say the closures caused by covid have given “Moulin Rouge” extra clout, as it is “about showing people fighting to save their beloved theatre against the odds. It is a story about the resilience of artists in the necessity of art”.

“Moulin Rouge! The Musical”, Capitol Theatre, Sydney, May 28-September 25.

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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