‘Moulin Rouge!’ review: NYC’s hottest nightclub is on Broadway – New York Post

Who wants ecstasy when we’ve acquired “Moulin Rouge!”?

That’s the stay of the unheard of unusual musical that opened Thursday night on Broadway: raucous sensory overload. From its entertaining sword swallowers to the newly pumped-up pop songbook and from-the-loins dancing, the uncover’s as refined as Liberace’s toy poodle: a glitter bomb on Broadway.

The high begins the 2nd you lope into the theater, which set up of residing designer Derek McLane modified into the compose of uber-cool, contributors-most productive nightclub that retains rejecting my application. Bathed in crimson gentle, four sultry, crystal-bedecked performers begin singing “Girl Marmalade,” which cancan kicks off the memoir of a penniless American creator in Paris and his awful lag with a cabaret big name.

Honest don’t uncover up procuring for a Madame Tussauds’ wax replica of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 movie. Songs such as “El Tango de Roxanne,” “Reach What Would possibly well,” “Your Music” and “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Only Friend” are soundless right here, but they’re joined by about 70 party crashers: Lunge the Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance” and Sia’s “Chandelier” among them.

These energetic unusual numbers boldly propel the uncover into the impress, and voice giggles at any time when one is cleverly launched. The unsuitable Duke of Monroth (Tam Mutu) introduces himself by crooning “Sympathy for the Satan,” and there’s a pulse-pounding crew dance to “Execrable Romance” by Girl Gaga. And, by God, it if truth be told works! The absolute most practical uncover of its kind since “Mamma Mia!,” “Moulin Rouge!” is a reminder that jukebox musicals aren’t required to be soulless behemoth vacationer traps. They’ll also be — gasp! — creative.

That acknowledged, the memoir is about a vacationer who feels trapped: It’s 1899, and Christian (Aaron Tveit), a songwriter, ditches Lima, Ohio, for Paris, most productive to search out fancy at the Moulin Rouge, a decadent nightclub that caters to males’s wildest fantasies. The hopeless romantic is there to affect Satine (Karen Olivo) to compose his unusual uncover, but, in a farcical mix-up, she mistakes him for the essential Duke of Monroth. Aloof, the 2 descend madly in fancy, because falling in fancy with Tveit ain’t stressful.

But fancy is a battlefield, and Christian is at warfare with the Duke, a sadistic snob who consents to subsidize the struggling nightclub if proprietor Harold Zidler (Danny Burstein) forks over his “Beautiful Diamond,” Satine. She, in turn, have to arrangement to a name between obligation and cutie.

Director Alex Timbers’ smartest switch is no longer looking out to reproduction Luhrmann’s mercurial-sever humorousness, which would possibly possibly smash and burn onstage. As an different, he specializes in grandiose feelings, sensuality and the storybook sensation of first fancy, for which Tveit’s home dog-canines innocence is greater.

A lyric like “Tonight . . . we are young. So, let’s set up of residing the enviornment on fireplace, we can burn brighter than the solar!” isn’t exactly “Ship within the Clowns.” But Tveit sings it with such earnestness that it comes off as meaningful poetry. He’s like minded with Olivo’s regal Satine, who’s more excellent and empowered than Nicole Kidman’s incarnation. That Mutu’s Duke is no longer most productive filthy prosperous but sizzling makes the fight for Satine’s coronary heart extraordinary more compelling.

Honest what Broadway wanted: A “Rouge” awakening.