‘It’s insane’: Moulin Rouge! The Musical! is the tonic Melbourne needs

There’s an elephant in the room at Moulin Rouge! The Musical! and, for once, it’s not COVID-19. Instead, it’s the 220-kilogram blue foam elephant that will soon loom over the stage at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre.

“It’s about 17-feet [5.1 metres] tall, so it’s actually taller than a real elephant,” says scenic designer Derek McLane. “Everything was made in Australia, basically, except the elephant we had made in the US and literally put on a ship and sent over here.”

Now the elephant – a replica of a stucco elephant that stood in the back garden of the original Moulin Rouge nightclub in Paris – is cooling its heels as the musical waits out Melbourne’s latest lockdown.

Alinta Chidzey and Des Flanagan play star-crossed lovers Satine and Christian in Moulin Rouge! The Musical!Credit: Steven Grace

In July, though, things were looking up. The musical was on track for its August opening, rehearsals were under way in Sydney and the show’s US creative team was either in the country or only days away from a boarding plane to get here.

That’s when I caught up with them – in a blur of locations over Zoom, where everyone appears on screen in that weirdly intimate way: director Alex Timbers in the all-white bedroom of his Times Square apartment; music supervisor Justin Levine huddled on a sofa in a Sydney rental; costume designer Catherine Zuber backstage surrounded by can-can dresses at the Regent; and McLane fresh from practising painting still-lifes while in quarantine in a Sydney hotel.

“Yesterday, I painted a package of water bottles that were sitting in here,” says McLane, gesturing to a corner of his hotel room. “I’ve drawn all my life as a set designer, sketched sets and things like that, but I’ve never painted from life.”

Is he pleased with his efforts?

“I’m pleased one moment, and then I look at it and go, ‘Oh, my god’.”

Moulin Rouge! The Musical! – yes, there are two exclamation marks – is the wildly glitzy stage adaptation of what was an already heady film. Starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor as star-crossed lovers Satine and Christian in 1900 Paris, it was the third in director Baz Luhrmann’s “red curtain trilogy”. But where Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet were slightly eccentric, yet, in hindsight, reasonably straightforward affairs, Moulin Rouge! was like being trapped under rolls of sequinned fabric in Spotlight with only a Bedazzler and Elton John for company.

It was a match made in maximalist heaven when director Alex Timbers met Baz Luhrmann at a dinner party in New York.

With its jukebox soundtrack – everything from T. Rex to David Bowie and Madonna – tragic love story, sumptuous costumes and psychedelic production design (for which the film would win two Academy Awards from eight nominations), its future as a stage musical seemed set.

However, it took more than 15 years to get there, with Australian producers Global Creatures chasing Luhrmann for six years. After a successful trial run in Boston in 2018, it opened on Broadway in 2019 with a supersized score of 71 songs. New York Magazine called it “Broadway’s biggest karaoke night” and, before COVID-19 halted the production in March last year, it was nominated for 14 Tony Awards.

When the show opens in Melbourne, it will be the second production of the musical in the world, with the Broadway show reopening in late September and London’s West End version following in mid-November. What makes it even more remarkable is that Melbourne is getting the complete shebang and not the usual slimmed-down touring version.

“It’s the full cat,” says Timbers. “It’s pretty cool. I mean, there’s a giant elephant sitting in the theatre, right? It’s extraordinary.”

Timbers has been with the production since 2016, when he was seated next to Luhrmann at an only-in-New-York dinner party hosted by US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.

It turned out to be a match made in maximalist heaven: Timbers had form in writing and directing the kind of stage spectacles you could imagine Luhrmann lapping up – an Imelda Marcos musical for one, and another in which he turned America’s seventh president, Andrew Jackson, into an emo rock star (tagline: “History just got all sexypants”). He’d also directed the Broadway adaptations of Beetlejuice and Rocky.

An email from Luhrmann to Timbers the next day set the wheels in motion and a meeting then confirmed they were “on the same page” for a Moulin Rouge! musical. The challenge then became how to update the score but stay true to the film’s Bohemian spirit.

Moulin Rouge! The Musical’s 220-kilogram elephant was carved from Styrofoam with a chainsaw. Credit: Steven Grace

“When I first saw the film in 2001, some of the songs felt so contemporary. And then others were retro,” says Timbers. “But then 20 years later your relationship to those songs completely shifts. So how do you mine the intervening period and update it that way?”

The answer was to call on Justin Levine, who Timbers met when they worked together on Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson in 2009. “He’s just a really big, big music thinker,” Timbers says of Levine. “So I just knew he could do these big-thinking arrangements. And, I have to say, as much as I believed in him, I’ve still been blown away by what he’s done. It’s truly mind-boggling. And I think as long as I live, I’ll probably never know a tenth of what he’s done.”

What Levine did was produce a score that manages to be thrilling yet familiar, creating a soundtrack that’s instantly recognisable as Moulin Rouge! – Lady Marmalade is still in there – yet very much its own beast.

Justin Levine at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre. Credit: Steven Grace

“The first thing I said to Alex was that if I do this right, I’m going to piss off as many people as I’m going to delight,” says Levine. “So that was something very much on my mind as I stepped into the role.”

Levine then holed up with Timbers and the show’s writer, John Logan, over three days in a hotel in New York to map out the musical. A wish list of songs was created and then Levine, along with music producer Janet Billig Rich, had to convince 161 writers to let them use their material. Bruno Mars said no. Beyonce, Adele, Sia and the Rolling Stones said yes.

“I knew Baz wanted to put some Rolling Stones in the original film, but couldn’t get the rights,” says Levine. “I really wanted to get some Rolling Stones in there. So, we went back and forth a bit, and it became apparent that the more we communicated, the more likely it was we were going to be able to use some things because they got to be more involved in the decision-making.”

And while it’s the Duke who gets his Sympathy for the Devil moment, Levine’s greatest trick is giving Satine a bigger voice in the epic 20-song Elephant Love Medley. In the film, Satine gently rebuffs Christian; here she claps backs with anti-love songs.

“I really wanted her to have a bit of her own agency and bring some of her own songs into the mix,” says Levine. “So we start out the same way that it starts in the movie, and then it expands from there. That was probably, for me, the most exciting and difficult section to work on.”

With the score in hand, Timbers’ next challenge was creating a set and costumes on par with Catherine Martin’s Oscar-winning designs.

“It is impossible not to be intimidated by that movie,” says Timbers. “It’s incredible. And when I think about adaptation for the stage, I try to think of it as a companion piece instead of a souvenir booklet. So I’m trying to think, ‘What are the things that [movie] made me feel? What are the essential qualities of it?’ And one of the things that movie felt was immersive.

“So it was like, well, let’s blast over the footlights, let’s have runways and pass arounds and side stages. Let’s wrap the whole theatre because you want the experience to be as democratic as possible. So if you’re in the mezzanine, [it feels like] you’re in the front row.”

Scenic designer Derek McLane used about 3500 light bulbs to light the set of Moulin Rouge! The Musical!

Enter McLane, who with costume designer Catherine Zuber visited Martin at her New York studio, where she offered them all of her research for the film and then encouraged them to “just do your own thing”.

McLane literally painted the town red, transforming Broadway’s Hirschfeld Theatre from a dull beige into a blood-red den of debauchery. Some 3500 light bulbs were installed; a glowing red heart-shaped tunnel framed the stage; and a windmill and that big blue elephant were propped up in the balconies.

“When we started, Alex and I talked about how do we capture the energy of the movie, which is, you know, insane,” says McLane. “And that energy is created by a lot of things in the movie – it’s great about the music, well, we’ve got that – but it’s also created by the way it’s edited and cut and the way the camera pans and zooms around. And neither of those two things are things we can do on stage.”

The solution was to turn everything up to 11 and create “speed-of-light transitions”.

“You go from one thing, and you think this is what this is,” says McLane. “And then bam, you’re in the next scene, and you’re like, ‘Whoa, what happened? It’s so different.’ That’s part of my attempt to try and bring some of that energy of the film to what you see on stage.”

Did Timbers ever tell him it was a bit much?

“Alex is one of the most gentle, diplomatic people I’ve ever worked with,” chuckles McLane. “He has a different way of saying it, which is, ‘Oh, that’s incredibly beautiful. I wonder if you might think about this.’ That’s how he directs you.”

The set for the Australian production was built in Adelaide, with McLane supervising from the US. He arrived in the country in July to oversee its installation, check the colours and – in what sounds like a euphemism, but I’m assured is a design term – will keep busy “tweaking the draperies” until opening night. “Draperies are not a scientific process,” he says. “So there will be tweaking, no matter what.”

Crew install the heart-shaped portal that forms the centrepiece of Moulin Rouge! The Musical!

Meanwhile, backstage at the Regent Theatre, Zuber is fiddling with some of the musical’s 200 costumes. She spent her two weeks in quarantine - very appropriately - learning French and liaising with the London and Broadway productions on their costumes.

“In New York, the costumes already exist, but they all need to be fitted again because people have been locked down for such a long time,” she says.

Lockdown kilos?

“Yes,” she says, laughing. “I didn’t want to say it. I had quarantine kilos. I tried on a pair of trousers and went, ‘What happened?’ I was eating one too many of those little desserts.”

And like those desserts, Zuber’s costumes are a frothy delight. Behind her, I can see layers of coloured tulle for the can-can dancers, while the more formal outfits are held together with boned corsetry. “Because our choreography is so intense, we need to stitch down all these ruffles at exactly this point,” she says, holding up a skirt. “Otherwise, the heels of the shoes can get caught, and it causes, you know, an interruption in the flow of the choreography.”

Catherine Zuber with some of the 200 costumes she designed for the musical.

And what about the blokes? How do you make a poor writer like Christian stand out among the glamour girls of the Moulin Rouge?

“I love the men’s tailoring of the Belle Epoque, especially the way men would take what was fashionable and make it their own,” she says. “[With Christian], I thought, well, he’s from America, he travelled by ship, so the cap he has, it’s like something one of the sailors gave him. And his trousers have a bit of a Western cut. So, I thought, maybe, he used to ride horses.

“Because we only have a moment in a musical, when you see a character like Christian, where they [first] make an appearance, and the audience is forming an opinion about who they are. And then when you do make costume changes, it’s grounded on an initial impression that has a place to go.”

When designing the costumes, Zuber had to keep in mind that the dancers heels could get caught in the outfit’s ruffles.

The other thing Zuber has to consider is the exit point of her costumes. What goes on, must come off. Fast. “Sometimes we have 10 seconds to get the whole ensemble in a completely different look,” she says. “So it’s almost like Formula One, when they have to change the tyres. And if a costume doesn’t move at the right time, it’s going to get run over by a piece of scenery.”

The last word in all this, of course, should go to Timbers in New York, who was keenly anticipating his arrival in Australia. “My girlfriend’s family lives in Sydney, so I just get these text videos of cockatoos and stuff like that. I’m just like, oh my gosh, I cannot wait to see what your everyday is. It’s very exciting to me.”

Doesn’t he get bird life in Times Square?

“We’ve got pigeons, starlings. We also have rats and cockroaches. Whatever your desires may be.”

If that doesn’t sound like a man who has spent too much time in the Moulin Rouge, I don’t know what does.

Tickets for Moulin Rouge! The Musical! are now on sale for performances up to February 2022.