Review of Moulin Rouge! The Musical —but the tour edition.

The irony in this blog post is that I told myself I would never see Moulin Rouge! The Musical. Although I was such a big Aaron Tveit fan when it first came out, and I was attending college in New York City, I never went to see it because I wasn’t interested in the show at all.

Even when they replaced Tveit with Derek Klena, who I’m also obsessed with and had seen multiple times before (in Jagged Little Pill and the Kennedy Center’s Sunset Boulevard), I still didn’t want to spend the money for what I had deemed to be a tourist show that I couldn’t get cheaper tickets for.

When a touring show comes to my local city, Baltimore, I end up always applying to the lottery whether I actually want to see the show or not. For the two years I’ve been doing this, I have never won the lottery once.

Somehow, I ended up winning the Moulin Rouge lottery when it came to town, and since the tickets were only $40, my sister agreed to go with me and drive.

I’d never been to the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore, but it was a pretty nice theater. They gave us Row AA seats in the orchestra, which were right in the center, but the entire few back rows were largely empty and other people around us moved at the intermission.

Let’s get into my review!

The story of love and the Moulin Rouge at the turn of the century.

I’d always heard that if you’re someone into more serious and dramatic theater, you need to enter Moulin Rouge with low expectations. And quite frankly, I agree with those sentiments.

This is a feel good show that you come into wanting to have a good time, as the story comes across as pretty flimsy.

Now, I haven’t seen the movie and express how similar it is to it, but it’s an entertaining show when you don’t think too hard about what’s happening on stage plot wise.

All in all, this is a story of romance. It’s about Satine, the star of the Moulin Rouge, accidentally falling in love with a wandering boy from Ohio who comes to Paris in search of something more in their life.

The shows asks for some suspension of disbelief because these two literally fall in love like snapping your fingers, and there’s not a ton of substance as to why they’ve gotten together really.

It’s also extremely dramatic when it comes to the love story, as the Moulin Rouge is in dire financial need and the wealthy benefactor wants to own Satine and everyone in the club.

This isn’t an original musical; all of the songs are remnants of other songs, mainly pop ones. This adds an element of surrealism to what’s happening on the stage, as people will and can start laughing when they recognize a song at the oddest moment.

People were roaring with laughter in my performance when certain songs popped up, and “Chandelier” was the biggest one that garnered a ton of laughs.

One of the marketing tools used to describe this show is that it’s a spectacle, and that’s very true. I will say the technical design on this show is the most outstanding elements to it. I saw the downgraded tour (after they announced budget cuts, which affected the staging, the windmill, and the elephant), but I thought that it was still pretty lavish.

As soon as you enter the theater before the show the massive neon sign is on the stage, setting the mood for what’s to come. The actors also wander on stage before the show starts, smoking and dancing provocatively, staring out into the audience.

Blocking was also incredible when it came to the dancing and how movement was utilized on the stage, so that’s two thumbs up from me when it comes to how the entire length of the stage was used.

I thought the Christian I saw was fantastic, and also sounded weirdly just like Aaron Tveit. My sister and I thought the Satine was a good actress, but her voice could’ve been fuller.

Overall Thoughts

For $40, I was satisfied with what I saw here tonight. I would not spend any more money on this show than what I did, but I’m glad I got to catch it eventually after skipping out on it so many times.

The tour isn’t as extravagant as the Broadway version, but I was still certainly enjoying the extravagance that was here on the tour. My only complaint (besides the story) is the fact that the audience for this show was terrible.

There were moments the usher yelled at someone in the middle of the performance for recording, and the woman in front of me recorded multiple times before getting caught.

People were also talking and having full on conversations in the middle of the show, which is so rude. I’m used to stricter Broadway audiences, or even the Kennedy Center, but I guess Moulin Rouge might’ve attracted a certain crowd.

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