‘Moulin Rouge! The Musical’: Theater Review

Moulin Rouge! was Baz Luhrmann at his most brashly baroque, a shameless pop-cultural magpie molding equal parts kitsch, cool and cliché into a rhapsodic dream. The giddy 2001 screen collision of soaring romance and dazzling artifice helped resuscitate the movie musical. Stage director Alex Timbers and the creative team on this delirious theatrical reinvention take those Luhrmann impulses and run with them, crafting a gaudy and gorgeous jukebox pastiche in which eye-popping spectacle, off-the-charts energy and almost non-stop musical mashups provide the plush padding for a featherweight plot.

The show is A LOT, in every sense, both intoxicating and exhausting in its unrelenting visual and sonic assault. But it virtually defies you not to be entertained.