Stage Door: "Moulin Rouge!" on Broadway

Stage Door is our intermittent theater review column, which might seem odd for a movie site, but we're headquartered in NYC so...

by Nathaniel R

Do you remember the sensation of watching Moulin Rouge! (2001) for the first time? I remember exactly where I was (the much-missed Zeigfeld theater in NYC)  and exactly how it felt as it washed, no, exploded all over me. Twas a dizzying overwhelming sensory experience from the moment the red curtain appeared. Moulin Rouge! (the movie) eventually calms down… or you acclimate to it (I’ve never known definitively which). The moment I gave in fully, convinced it was something emotionally special and not just a flurry of exciting images, was Ewan McGregor’s spontaneous inspirational belting of “The hills are alive… with the sound of music”. The moment the movie belonged to me, and I to it, was the entrance of the Sparkling Diamond herself, Satine (Nicole Kidman) descending on a trapeze to sing “Diamond’s are a Girl’s Best Friend”. 

These moments are dutifully recreated for the new Broadway incarnation. The experience is not quite the same. Some cinematic bliss cannot be easily transferred to a different medium. Nevertheless there’s still green fairy dust sprinkled on this musical. It just takes a bit longer to lift off...

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Stage Door: Where are the original musicals?

by Nathaniel R

Uh-oh... The Tony Awards last month wrapped up the 2018/2019 season with a reminder that original musicals were doing just fine (The Prom is getting a film version,  Hadestown remains a very hot ticket, and Tootsie has its diehard fans). Strangely, then, the 2019/2020 Broadway season is looking troubling from this distance. Of the six new musicals currently scheduled for the season NONE have original scores....

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Soundtracking: Moulin Rouge!

by Chris Feil

Perhaps it’s easy to forget how revolutionary Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge! was in 2001. The thing about masterpieces is their legacy sometimes overshadows the context that birthed them. But at the time, the musical was a massive gamble and creative leap, helping to relaunch the genre that had died a slow death at the box office and to cultural  cinematic tastes. Just as Luhrman’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet had aggressively re-imagined its text for the MTV set, he delivered something even more drug-fevered to the musical, shattering notions of what the genre’s limitations were and how it could exist in the modern era.

Musicals may be more commonplace now, but they have yet to be as audacious since. But as much as Luhrman’s trippy, frenetic stylings play nearly twenty (gasp!) years later as its most obvious innovations, it was Luhrman’s music choices that were the biggest shock to the system for movie musicals.

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Doc Corner: The First Female Film Director in 'Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché'

By Glenn Dunks

For a film about a little-known name of early silent cinema, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché sure does come out of the gates swinging. Swinging and sweeping and swooping and spinning and kicking and ecstatically careening through the streets of Paris. The opening passages of Pamela B. Green’s revelatory documentary are so frenetically paced that it’s almost exhausting. When I posited that none other than Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! was an inspiration, the film’s own Twitter feed confirmed it. Indeed.

And it’s not just the opening, too. The entirety of this film is surprisingly fast-paced, often editing its collage of film clips, archival video, contemporary exploration and talking heads into a dizzying soup of cinematic nostalgia...

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Moulin Rouge!'s Stage Life Begins

by Chris Feil

We've long been awaiting Baz Luhrman's masterpiece Moulin Rouge! to fulfill the seemingly ancient prophecy to make its way onto the stage. Well, that day has finally arrived as the musical's pre-Broadway tryout begins tonight at Boston's Emerson Colonial Theatre.

We have already been teased by Aaron Tveit singing the epic love song "Come What May" in a foggy theatre, but now we have the real goods we've been dying to see: Karen Olivo stepping into the large shoes of Nicole Kidman as the sparkling diamond Satine and a theatre completely transformed to Luhrman excess. While Olivo's costume (designed by this year's My Fair Lady Tony winner Catherine Zuber) might be somewhat understated from what we might have been hoping to see, we're confident there is further opulence coming once we see what the rest of the show has in store. As for the set, hold on to your hats...

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