Review: “Moulin Rouge!” Is a Spectacular Spectacular

Before saying anything about the new “Moulin Rouge!” musical, I must first address the elephant in the room, or should I say elephants, since there are two: both a literal giant elephant in one of the balcony boxes of the newly-renovated Al Hirschfield Theatre and a metaphorical elephant, the musical’s beloved source material, Baz Luhrmann’s iconic 2001 film. Although many adoring fans take the film quite seriously, at its core it is a glorified, glittering jukebox movie musical, full of funny anachronisms and mostly flat characters. It is important to keep this in mind and to not take the musical too seriously, since it certainly doesn’t.

Much like the movie, the stage adaptation tells the story of Christian (Aaron Tveit), a young writer in 1899 Paris, and Satine (Karen Olivo), a tubercular courtesan and cabaret performer at the legendary Monmatre club the Moulin Rouge — you know, the one with the windmill? Which, as it happens, is in the other balcony box across from the elephant.

Much like the Studio 54 revival of “Cabaret,” and “Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812,” here the set, and the theatre itself, has been designed to take us directly into the Moulin Rouge club, led by Danny Burstein as Ziedler (a Frenchified version of the MC from “Cabaret”). The gorgeous immersive space by Derek Mclane is luxuriously draped…