The Playhouse, Edinburgh
Four stars
When Baz Luhrmann made Moulin Rouge in 2001, the last of the Australian auteur’s ‘Red Curtain Trilogy’ after Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet was an audacious fusion of turn of the nineteenth century Paris-by-night bohemianism and contemporary pop bangers. This made for the ultimate backstage musical. Almost a quarter of a century on, director Alex Timbers and writer John Logan’s delirious stage mash up has become a global sensation. First performed in 2018, productions in New York, London and Melbourne are still running, with the show’s first world tour opening in Edinburgh where it is in residence for the next six weeks.
This extensive back-story only goes some way to introduce the sheer scale, ambition and outrageous excess of the three hyperactive hours of breathless spectacle that is the result. If plot is what you’re after, Logan’s book stays faithful to the film, as American dreamer in search of a scene Christian lands in Paris, where he speaks in song lyrics while Toulouse-Lautrec appears to be writing The Sound of Music.
Over at the Moulin Rouge itself, meanwhile, star of the show Satine is preparing to meet a horny duke who can buy the club out of trouble, but only if he can get a good deal on Satine as well. As assorted amours ebb and flow, Satine may be doomed, but the club is saved and Christian gets his mojo back.
But never mind all that. Spectacle is everything here. At the start of the show, two women swallow swords flanked by a reproduction of the Moulin Rouge windmill crammed in to the box seats on one side high above the stage, while a life size model of an elephant sits opposite. All this is before a sassy quartet of showgirls strut their stuff on an obligatory cover of Lady Marmalade on designer Derek McLane’s great big love heart of a set. Flanked by an all singing, all dancing ensemble, this sub erotic explosion lays down the lascivious shape of things to come once Satine swings into view singing Diamonds are Forever.
With choreographer Sonya Tayhe’s show-stopping dance numbers driving things, the cast bump and grind their way through more than seventy pop classics by the likes of Beyoncé, Lorde, Outkast, Katy Perry, Elton John, David Byrne and more. These are cut up in such a way that there is barely a line from one song before we’ve fast-forwarded on to the next.
This is especially effective on big set pieces such as Christian and Satine’s love song medley, delivered by Nate Landskroner and Verity Thompson like they’re vamping it up on some TV variety show special. There is even room here for a fleeting snatch of the theme song from late nineties/early noughties angst heavy teen melodrama, Dawson’s Creek.
Things rewind even further back in a dressing room Rolling Stones medley led by James Bryers as the Duke. The breathless Lady Gaga/Britney Spears/Eurythmics etc rehearsal room megamix routine that opens the second half, meanwhile, is a great big scarlet coloured sugar rush.
Pop music is a fickle beast, mind, and any future reboots might have to draft in some of the latest stadium sized pop flames to keep up. As it stands, this short attention span extravaganza is as thrilling as it is exhausting in a show bathed in enough blood-red neon it could crash the Paris power grid. Just in the nick of time, the grand finale of this non-stop erotic cabaret even manages to squeeze in a can-can of epic proportions. Enchanted.
The Herald, May 2nd 2025
ends
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