It Does What It Says On The Can-Can!
Baz Luhrmann’s deft capacity to envision new worlds in new ways through new eyes has placed him at the peak of Hollywood artistry. Not only his ability to find, fashion and formulate dazzling new images and inspired panoramas but also to deliver something equally as valuable and important, putting the biz in show biz – money! His works tingle with extravagance and shimmer with opulence especially in his 2001 oddity “Moulin Rouge!”, which, though toffing its top hat to history, reinvents, reimagines and reupholstered the lot. It fizzes with unique ideas and iconic vistas which linger long after the final shot has faded into celluloid oblivion coupled with a bubbling, melting pot of eclectic songs and music – little of which is of the period but drawn from a vast and eclectic selection of references from Hollywood to vaudeville to cabaret to opera-bouffe to the Police and Madonna. Intriguing bed fellows you may think and it’s a delightful cocktail. A party with guests from diametrically opposing backgrounds mingled, modified and mixed together with elegance and elan by our host, Baz. It’s a smorgasbord of diverse and diversified ingredients which in theory shouldn’t work, but in Baz’s magical fingers are conjured into a potent banquet of divine flavours. And with a song list to die for how could it not be a stunning stage musical?
Well, it was possibly the American musician and wit Oscar Levant who coined the phrase, “Scratch away the tinsel on the surface of Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath.” A sentence which couldn’t be truer when applied to this heady brew of sights and sound, which, while imitating the essence of the movie, doesn’t quite capture it’s gossamer qualities and all that Baz pizzazz! What it gives us instead is a surrealist montage linked around a thin plot which, when it finally kicks off, proves marginally engaging. But it’s the songs which people come for (and at £100+ a ticket there were a lot of folk eager to be satisfied) but many lack the dramatic weight they would have had had they been penned specifically for the moment to carry the plot rather than torn kicking and screaming from the charts of varying decades, denude of their original purpose and arrangements and forced to serve a purpose for which they were never intended.
However, what we do get is two ravishing and beguiling performances in the shape of that stonking theatrical war horse, Cameron Blakeley, as the ringmasterish, Zidler, who plays the crowd with consummate aplomb and keeps the limited comedy flowing like wine. Whilst Verity Thompson embodies Satine and bestows her with carnal lust mixed with an angelic voice lighting the flame of Katy Perry’s “Firework” illuminating the stage with her glow.
If you liked the film, you’ll like the show. If you liked the show you’ll love it even more if you’ve paid £100+ and will assure yourself of a standing ovation for the price. It’s fun, it’s frolicsome, it’s French – what more could you ask for?
Reviewer: Peter Kinnock
Reviewed 15th October 2025
North West End UK Rating: