Review: 'Moulin Rouge! The Musical' arrives at the Pantages in a burst of colorful excess

Any jukebox musical that starts with a bump-and-grind rendition of “Lady Marmalade” means business. And “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” the Broadway juggernaut spun from Baz Luhrmann's 2001 film, is only getting started with this Las Vegas-style dance party.

If the Cheesecake Factory were a musical, it would no doubt look and sound much like “Moulin Rouge.” The temptations are obvious, the portions huge and the goal is satiety to point of button-popping exhaustion.

What one theatergoer considers deliciously lavish will be seen by another as decadently excessive. “Moulin Rouge,” which is having its Los Angeles premiere at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, is a musical of extremes. Winner of 10 Tony Awards, including best musical, the show doesn’t traffic in subtlety or nuance. The entertainment is propulsive, salacious, nonstop and downright clobbering.

The production, directed with colorful flamboyance by Alex Timbers, wears its artifice like a bubblegum corsage. The staging may occasionally bring back flashbacks of the Valentine's Day aisle of your local pharmacy, but the gaudy rakishness seems right at home at the Pantages.

Scenic designer Derek McLane creates a festive ambience, evocative not so much of fin de siècle Paris, where the story of “Moulin Rouge” takes place, but of a secret gallery of wonder at the Paris Las Vegas hotel casino, where a replica of the Eiffel Tower livens up the skyline, fooling no one.

On one side of the stage is a windmill; on the other is a giant elephant. At the center is Moulin Rouge, the nightclub near Montmartre, where can-can dancers show off their undergarments, morality is held in abeyance and romance is a mercantile sport.

The plot of the musical isn’t identical to the film, but the thrust is the same: Christian (Conor Ryan), a young songwriter from Ohio, has arrived in Paris and is immediately recognized for his lyrical genius by Toulouse-Lautrec (André Ward), who is devising a new show for Satine (Courtney Reed), the Moulin Rouge headliner who feels time bearing down on her.

Harold Zidler (Austin Durant), the owner of the nightclub, has arranged an assignation between Satine and the Duke of Monroth (David Harris). Harold, who looms fiendishly like the sentinel of the gates of hell, knows that Satine could use a sugar daddy and hopes that the duke will be so taken with her sensual gifts that he will finance the club’s new show.

Christian, however, ensnares Satine’s heart with his silly love songs, which he dreams up with the alacrity of a music library playlist. It turns out the Duke has a dark side and doesn’t take kindly to playing second fiddle to a struggling American songwriter in Paris. As he plots his revenge, Satine must choose between penurious love and oppressive, though posh, security.

The gimmick of both Luhrmann’s film and the musical, which features a book by John Logan and arrangements and orchestrations by musical supervisor Justin Levine, is that anachronistic pop hits are the lingua franca of the characters, who communicate their passions with the help of songs made famous by Elton John, Beyoncé, Madonna, Rihanna, Katy Perry and far too many others to mention here. Levine contributes additional lyrics that perform the usual jukebox service of shoehorning songs into an unrelated storyline.

Luhrmann’s film is an overripe visual opera. Timber’s musical production is a karaoke fantasy. The song list whips the audience into a Pavlovian froth.

When Lady Gaga’s dance hit “Bad Romance” opens the second act in the guise of “Backstage Romance,” led by tangoing gigolo Santiago (Gabe Martínez) and jaded showgirl Nini (Libby Lloyd), the energy onstage is matched by the energy in the audience. The thunderous ovation at the end of the number, thrillingly choreographed by Sonya Tayeh, was sustained at such a pitch I almost feared theatergoers would storm the stage to join the fun.

No one in attendance at Thursday’s opening seemed at all concerned that story was subordinated to musical spectacle. “Moulin Rouge” gives us a modern pop mashup of “La Traviata,” with its dying courtesan with a noble heart, and "La Bohème," with its impoverished bohemian artists in the Latin Quarter making art, falling in love and confronting death.

When consumptive Satine coughs into her handkerchief, she reveals the red blotch as any terminal operatic heroine knows to do. Reed doesn’t pretend to be acting in Shakespeare. Her gestures and expressions are performed as though for a 1980s music video — everything writ as large as humanly possible.

Reed’s singing is strong by cover-band standards, but it’s the vitality of her stage presence that commands attention. Her Satine moves with seductive authority, fully aware of her effect on the men and no doubt quite a few women who pay to see her glisten while singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

Catherine Zuber’s costumes, as glamorous as they are louche, practically steal the show. The production’s design grows in artistry as the scene moves to the Parisian streets, with painterly scrims that have the charm of an animated film and lighting by Justin Townsend that introduces gorgeous chiaroscuro effects.

Durant might as well be melodramatically twirling a mustache the entire time he’s onstage as a cartoon version of Harold. Ward’s Toulouse-Lautrec wears his accent like a wet Band-Aid, not that it matters when he’s lighting up a tune. Harris’ Duke plays the villainous snob with a degree of cunning that keeps us uncertain of the extent of his depravity.

As Christian, Ryan captivates most when he’s singing his heart out. His voice casts a spell that unlocks the treasures of favorite songs, old and new. (The list of hits has been updated from the movie, to jog the memories of millennials while still slaking Gen X thirst.)

I was unable to emotionally invest in Christian and Satine’s fate. “Moulin Rouge” is a Broadway musical that elicits more sweat than tears. But resistance is futile in the tidal wave of glorious music and the company's determination to send everyone home with an ecstatic smile.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.