I wish I could say that I loved Moulin Rouge but even after all this time I honestly still have no idea how I feel about it. It's a difficult musical for me to be critical about because it means so much to me personally, and regardless of my issues with it I will always love it and proudly wear my merch because it's so wrapped up in so many amazing experiences for me. If it wasn't for this musical I wouldn't of traveled to New York and it would of remained a 'someday' dream, I would never have met my favorite actor and given him a piece of my artwork, I would never have been on the journey it took me to get there in the first place. Which is why it pains me so much to say that there were a lot of elements I didn't actually like, and overall I just found a lot of it's storytelling really weak.
It's obviously impossible not to compare it to the movie as it’s supposed to be a direct adaptation, and I don't know how much that spoils it as obviously it gives you a certain level of anticipation before you even go in. I guess if you’re not a fan of the movie you might enjoy it more, but I am a fan if the movie, it’s been one of my all time favorites for about 10 years so I was pretty pumped. I completely understand the need for changes between movie and stage so I wasn't looking for a carbon copy, if anything I was excited to see these characters have new life breathed into them and see them be reinterpreted, but the musical just missed the mark on so many levels.
The worst parts are undoubtedly the book and the score, more than anything it just didn't feel finalized could of benefited from further rewrites. Visually this musical is second to none, the set design in particular is just incredible and I will throw hands if it doesn't win a Tony, second for the choreography too. The costumes were a bit hit or miss, some were spectacular, particularly Satine's and Zidler's, but Christian's and the Duke's were just...odd. Especially Christian's, why with all of the neckerchiefs?? I get that it's not supposed to be a realistic depiction of 1899, even the movie isn't historically accurate, but some of the costume choices just left me scratching my head as they seemed weird and out of place in 2019, never mind 1899. I also didn't get why Christian is suddenly from Lima, Ohio. I understand making him an American character for American audiences, and I'd much rather that then sit through an actor murder an English accent, but why make it so specific? It didn't enhance the plot and there was no explanation as to why he'd moved from Ohio all the way to France, it just seemed like an excuse to make some weird Ohio jokes.
The performances by absolutely everyone on stage were phenomenal. The ensemble were incredible, Danny Burstein had the whole audience in the palm of his hand as Zidler, I loved Ricky Rojas as the Argentinian Santiago, and how his and Toulouse's roles were fleshed out (I'm a HUGE fan of the real Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and I loved how they incorporated his paintings into the scenery). I wasn't overly familiar with Karen Olivo before but she was fantastic, especially her voice, and she really gave the character her all. And as I've already said Aaron is one of my favorite actors and his performance was just as amazing as I'd hoped. I stress all of this because what I'm going to say next has nothing to do with the cast, they did an incredible job within the limitations of the script they had to work with. But man, I really think this is one of the worst written musicals I've ever seen?? And I saw Love Never Dies before the re-writes.
Throughout promotion they keep mentioning just how many pop songs they'd fit in to the musical, and I feel like they're more impressed with that than they are literally anything else and most of the additions felt completely unnecessary and hurt the script. In the movie the pop songs are charming and are musically altered to fit the scene, like Roxanne by The Police being turned into a tango, Madonna's Like A Virgin becomes a foppish farce, etc. I would of expected Broadway creators to have a better grasp of this kind of creativity within music, but they instead interpret the songs literally as straight up pop songs making it feel more like an episode of Glee. It feels like every time someone said "this moment reminds me of x song" they added it in, and you spend half of the musical internally playing "Name That Tune" which completely takes you away from the story. Also a lot of the songs seemed like they were chosen for laughs, which meant that the tone of the show was just all over the place and the audience just didn't know how to react and ended up laughing at poignant moments. I'm also not sure how wise it is to fill the soundtrack with pop music from the past 10 years? A big strength the movie had was that because it mostly reworked classic hits it felt ageless, but so much recent pop music is going to age this one fast and it'll be interesting to see if it's still even relevant in 5-10 years. I also wish they'd used Come What May more, I felt like Your Song had replaced it as Satine and Christian's love song but I realize that's just personal preference.
Because of the over-saturation of pop songs the book is extremely lacking and the dialogue is often cringe and cheesy. Like, SO cheesy it was embarrassing to watch at times. Whilst the movie knows when it's being cheesy and plays up to it to add to the heightened reality, the stage adaptation took itself too seriously in these moments so it just fell flat, and it was such a messy job that the parts that are supposed to be emotional just aren't. Christian yelling "because she doesn't love you!" to the Duke didn’t make me gasp or feel any concern for his welfare. Quite honestly I didn't even care when Satine dies in Christian's arms because Christian isn't given any time to mourn, he just gets up and starts monologuing about bohemian ideals so I'm pretty sure he's already over it. In the movie you feel Ewan’s pain, the tragedy of how they're still on stage and the audience think her death is part of the show and clap unsuspectingly as Christian screams out in pain. Here it's too fast paced to allow anything to set in, and they quickly transition into a dance and sing Outkast's Hey Ya! to lighten the mood. It's a weird choice.
I also didn't like how some of the characters had been rewritten and struggled to get invested in them. Satine is written as a strong, independent woman, but she ends up being so strong that I don't buy her story arc at all and Christian seems more like a nuisance to her than a potential love interest. In fact I don't buy their relationship at all as we don't really get to see it? The writers were so focused on adding appropriate pop songs that they fail to focus on the love and intimacy between them so their romance is never explored. Satine gets more intimate with the Duke than she ever does Christian, and one of the biggest plot points they missed overall was that Satine WON'T! SLEEP! WITH! THE! DUKE! and that's why the Duke get's so jealous and why Christian has a breakdown and it's the linchpin of the whole plot. She won't sleep with the Duke because she loves Christian and doesn't want to and it becomes an issue of consent and sexual assault, but in this version she jumps into bed with the Duke straight away and we never see her having any of these moments with Christian who seems more concerned with philosophizing over the subject of love in general, so the love triangle just doesn't work.
I also felt that Christian needed more sensuality and darkness to him, the only time we really get to see anything like that with his character is during Roxanne which is absolutely mesmerizing and heartbreaking but I wanted to see more of that as the story builds. Ewan McGregor's Christian is naive but still sensual and passionate, whereas this Christian is much more of a boy scout and I missed the darkness and madness that disturbs his euphoric happiness of being with Satine. I don't blame Aaron for this as I know he doesn’t shy away from complex characters with some darkness to them, it's clearly very much a script and direction issue, but I wish they'd given him more substance instead of being too afraid of potentially making him in any way dislikable.
Zidler is also completely changed and becomes a much more sympathetic character and very protective of his girls, which completely erases the exploitative nature of the Moulin Rouge and repaints it as a safe haven for misfits so there's no real sense of risk to any of the story. In the movie the atmosphere is cut throat, Zidler literally sells Satine in an attempt to save his own ass and feeds her with the idea that she's not deserving of love and any attachments would place her at enormous personal risk. Without that background the stakes are lowered and so Christian and Satine's love is neither as triumphant nor as tragic as they never really had a lot to overcome in the first place other than Satine's indifference to Christian (seriously, when she tells him he means nothing to her I fully believed her!). Even when the Duke is making threats against Christian there's no weight behind any of it as he doesn't really hold any of the cards so it's not menacing. At the end The Duke's story line isn't even resolved, he just suddenly isn't there anymore. Compared to the movie where Zidler grows and gradually becomes protective of Satine and shoots the Duke to defend her, it's a bit of a different mood!
I know from all of this it probably sounds like I hated it, but I didn't! Despite all of these misgivings I can't help but love it anyway in all of it's gaudy, ostentatious glory. I just wish it were better written by people who cared about the original movie, rather than people who wanted style over substance with tacky ideas over what a jukebox musical should be like. Theater should be about the story first, everything else second, and they had a great story to work with but they didn't. But whilst it's not the most expertly crafted and doesn't even have a lot of heart considering it's a story about love, it is fun and there's a lot to be said for that. You won't cry, but you're guaranteed a good time, and I know that's enough for a lot of people so I'd still recommend it. Especially because of how hard the cast are working every single night, I felt exhausted just watching them! The opening of Act 2 with Bad Romance was probably worth the cost of admission alone (although it was completely pointless within the context of the story, which is what so much of it keeps boiling down to!)
I also appreciate that my negative feelings are because of my love for the movie and I might not have been so harsh on it if I wasn't already so emotionally tied to these characters. However I do know that audience reaction and reviews have been very polarizing, and I’m quite active in musical theater spaces online and I think it says a lot that outside of Aaron and Karen fans people aren’t generally talking about Moulin Rouge much compared to other shows that have opened recently. And although I'm really dragging it, it's only because I care about it so much! Despite what you might think from reading this I did enjoy it and I would happily go see it again. Although I saw other shows on Broadway on my trip, Moulin Rouge was definitely the most memorable and has come to epitomize the whole journey for me which is why it's so special (on top of it allowing me the opportunity to meet Aaron which I WILL NOT SHUT UP ABOUT!!)
Overall it had me leaving the Al Hirshfeld feeling a mix of excitement and disappointment. Excitement because some of the music was fun and Aaron Tveit live!!! But so much disappointment because I didn’t feel anything at the end when everything is falling apart, and ultimately there’s no love in a story about love.
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