![]() That’s the open-faced, virginal Christian (Mr. ![]() In contrast, there’s our other host, who says he’s summoning a cherished chapter of his life for our delectation. “No matter your sin, you are welcome here.” “Welcome, you gorgeous collection of reprobates and rascals, artistes and arrivistes, soubrettes and sodomites,” he says. That’s Harold Zidler, played with rouged cheeks, suspicious eyes and an all-embracing leer by a marvelous Mr. And a splendidly seedy master of ceremonies greets us with flattering insults. (A top-form Catherine Zuber has dressed the cast sumptuously, in clothes designed to ravish.) Men in top hats and tails, cigars clamped between their lips, assess the human flesh on offer. Lissome men and women, wearing little more than corsets and stockings, stare down the audience. Derek McLane’s dazzling nightclub set of the title - that’s the same Moulin Rouge associated with Toulouse-Lautrec, and yes, he’s a character here - is a gasp-inspiring nest of valentine hearts, cushioned nooks and outsize exotica, illumined in shades of pink and red by the lighting designer Justin Townsend. Thus when you enter the Hirschfeld you will immediately encounter variations on the idea of love for sale. It picks up on the outmoded idea of show people as close kin to panderers and prostitutes, emphasizing the transactional relationship between live entertainers and their audiences. Timbers’s production, which features a strategically clichéd book by John Logan, translates the shimmery illusions of cinema into the grit and greasepaint of live theater. The team behind “Moulin Rouge” - which includes the brilliant arranger and orchestrator Justin Levine and the choreographer Sonya Tayeh - know that familiar music opens the floodgates of recollection like few other stimuli.Īt the same time, Mr. Or rather, it’s like the memory of all those parties merged into one streamlined fantasy. It has side effects, for sure, including the vertigo that comes from having your remembrance of songs past tickled silly and the temporary blockage of any allergies to jukebox musicals.īut for its plump, sleek two-and-a-half hours of stage time, “Moulin Rouge” - which stars a knockout Karen Olivo, with Aaron Tveit and Danny Burstein doing their best Broadway work to date - has the febrile energy you may associate with the wilder parties of your youth, when gaudy nights seemed to stretch into infinity. Inspired by the 2001 Baz Luhrmann film and directed with wicked savvy by Alex Timbers, this “Moulin Rouge” is a cloud-surfing, natural high of a production. That’s where the euphoric “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” opened on Thursday night in a shower of fireworks, confetti and glittering fragments of what feels like every pop hit ever written. All you party people should know that the Al Hirschfeld Theater has been refurbished as an opulent pleasure palace, wherein decadence comes without hangovers.
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