From the Screen to the Stage: Moulin Rouge!

Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001) is one of my all-time favourite films. It is therefore no small thing when I say that the theatrical adaptation is even better. The show premiered on Broadway in 2019, won ten Tony Awards (including Best Musical), and arrived in the West End earlier this year. Both Hollywood and Broadway tell the story of Christian, a starry-eyed writer who travels to Paris at the turn of the century and falls in love with a courtesan named Satine, the headliner of the notorious Moulin Rouge night club. Christian and Satine’s romance is jeopardised when Harold Zidler, the owner of the Moulin Rouge, forms a dangerous business deal with a malevolent duke who lusts after Satine. With the duke sponsoring a show at the club which Christian is writing and Satine is starring in, tensions are on the rise, leading up to a fateful premier night.