Moulin Rouge The Musical

Baz Luhrmann (creator, movie), John Logan (book), Sonya Tayeh (chor),

Nick Grace Management

Palace Theatre, Manchester

August 20 - October 4, 2025; 2 hrs 45 mins

A spectacular scene from Moulin Rouge The Musical. Pic: Matt Crockett

Sumptuous, stunning, a feast for the eyes and ears. Moulin Rouge The Musical begins before it begins: firstly, if you've seen the movie, in our expectations, and secondly in the theatre - before we're even seated.

The set is open to the auditorium, without a curtain, showing the layered decorative hearts of the Moulin Rouge, reimagined from the movie version. The set is red, the lighting (gorgeously designed by Justin Townsend) is red, the girls come out, in black and red, and we feel as if we've come in from the streets of Manchester to the heights of Montmartre. 

A windmill, lit up and animated, swirls from a high box on one side of the stage and an elephant protrudes from the other. We could be in the Moulin Rouge itsel. Or perhaps in a movie.

The show begins, cleverly, with the commercial track that launched the movie soundtrack back in 2001, Lady Marmalade. There are echoes of the raunchy music video featuring Christina Aguilera, Lil Kim, Mya and Pink, this time with four glorious courtesans of the ensemble, including Baby Doll (Scott Sutcliffe) later revealed as a man in drag - we never knew. Such is the aesthetic of the Moulin Rouge. All are welcome and anything goes.

It's a stage show, based on a movie, that was about a stage show. This time the stage aims to enhance and make immersive and real what we saw on screen, and It often succeeds. Most of the numbers are medleys, of previously unrelated numbers or with tenuous links, and this is really what makes Moulin Rouge! a unique musical experience.

The show continues what the film did so well, adding additional material, modernising and reminiscing, and creating a timeless moment for today's audience. The second act opener is a prime example, a new and surprising selection, expertly assembled for the entire ensemble, including Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, Soft Cell's 1980s hit Tainted Love, and Britney Spears' Toxic. It's a mashed-up whirlwind of time and place, great musical ideas and timeless entertainment. 

There are moments that don't work quite so well. The Elephant Love Medley that was sung so iconically in Baz Luhrmann's movie by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, begins here in a more hushed, spoken exchange, and then a plethora of new musical clips are added. There are funny moments with the new songs, but generally the scene doesn't have the same momentum. And overall, at two hours and 45 minutes, the production is long.

The music and dancing is often the most successful element, as the storytelling is melodramatic in the extreme. There is one quieter, French cafe-type moment in Toulouse-Lautrec (Kurt Kansley)'s treatise to young Christian, Nature Boy. But by the second act the quiet moments have gone and there is high drama throughout.  

The absinthe scene, moved on from its original position in the movie, is now set to Sia's 2014 hit Chandelier. It's a wonderful, soaring moment of Hedonism that brings out the resonant tenor of Zidler (Cameron Blakely) among so many other things.

The cast stun. Leads Verity Thompson and Josh Rose on Thursday give us everything our hearts could dream of, and the second couple, Santiago (Rodrigo Negrini) and Nini (Kahlia Davis) give us even more. But there's so much more in the production that creates this specatacle: Sonya Tayeh's choreography is to die for; Justin Levine's beautiful orchestrations, Derel McClane's epic creation of the Moulin Rouge in set, and Catherine Zuber's lush costuming, that draws from artistic impressions of the Moulin Rouge, old and new. 

It's silly, it's cabaret, but it's beautiful. Leave your moral fibre at the door. Moulin Rouge! is a feast for the senses.

More info and tickets here