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The list of theater superstitions is a long one: Dont say Good luck before a show.
For goodness sake, dont say Macbeth inside a theater.
Never bring a peacock feather onstage.
When youre backstage, dont whistle.
Mirrors onstage are bad luck.
So are three lit candles and the color blue.
Maybe having an elephant in the room needs to be added to the list.
And the big blue (!)
Its not even very interesting.
Theres a shapelessness about it, a weird enervation underneath the flash and bang.
Its directed by Alex Timbers, but it feels like it was assembled by committee, even by algorithm.
The show veers broadly away from its beloved-by-millennials-everywhere source material, which in itself is no crime.
Everywhere it should be filthy, its scrubbed aggressively clean, yet somehow its still a hot mess.
Perhapsthismight have tipped us off.
But now its become little more than a jukebox.
And as Parisian prostitutes should be well aware, it doesnt take long for the tease to get tiring.
if brazenly over-the-top brazenly appealing, too.
Theyre there, but theyre buried in an avalanche of flimsy filler.
Timbers doesnt even seem excited about them.
Its two and a half hours of karaoke on a multimillion-dollar budget.
And its actors seem uncomfortably trapped by it.
The same little titter of recognition happens in the audience every time Omg that one,too?
The answer is obvious bigger, newer, louder, flashier!
but the results are flattening.
Olivo and Burstein get no such solid, if heightened, objectives to work with.
And meanwhile, the evil Duke (Tam Mutu) gets exactly what he wants.
Such a tweak might seem natural enough, but it desperately deflates the storys stakes.
The Duke isnt waiting for anything; hes already got what he came for.
Again, the musical has slicked over the potential for gross, gritty, real feeling amidst the artifice.
It is, on the whole, startlingly devoid of actual passion.
Theres more emotion and more nasty, wacky fun being had in thisGIFthan in the entire show.
But in service of what?
Thats fine, thats the story spare me the surface-level 2019 rebranding.
The real frustration ofMoulin Rouge!is that it feels so completely like a product.
Underneath its pulsing, crimson exterior, its creepily cold-blooded.
For $40, it’s possible for you to buy them in the lobby on a T-shirt.
Right after youve listened to the cast follow up a romantic tragedy by bopping around to Hey Ya!
during the curtain call.
Moulin Rouge!is at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre.
