The overly hyped and romanticized movie has been adapted into a musical which is coming to Broadway this summer. Yep. It’s actually happening.
This is it. This is the seventh sign of the apocalypse because Broadway has officially been ruined and there’s no coming back from this point.
Most of us, when we heard about the resurrection of this long dead movie, probably assumed it would be a similar case to Amelie (which was at least well written!) and only play for a few months before losing money and getting negative reviews and inevitably closing. But nope. It’s been playing in Boston since July 2018 and is scheduled to open on Broadway in July of this year. People have been paying to see this show for 9 months. I think it’s safe to say the future of musical theatre is in mortal peril.
The all-star cast (including Aaron Tveit, Karen Olivo and Danny Burstein) is not enough to make us forget that they barely altered the score from the original movie! The score that included mashups of the current pop hits of 2001 as well as some songs only people born before ‘95 have heard of. Justin Paul, lyricist of the current Broadway hit Dear Evan Hansen, as well as many other shows, agrees that the score is “unoriginal” and “out of touch with the current audience”. His writing partner, Benj Pasek, shares a similar opinion claiming Moulin Rouge is “trying a bit too hard”. If anyone would know what what an original score looks like, it would be Pasek and Paul, creators of Edges, James and the Giant Peach and many others.
I think we can all agree that musical adaptations of movies are being done to death. Just look at the theatre community right now: Mean Girls; Heathers; Spongebob; The Lion King and every other Disney musical created… it’s being completely overdone. The creators of Moulin Rouge are offering no original thought to the world of theatre, they’re merely recycling ideas that have been done effectively already. But the scary part, is that they’re being rewarded for it. Moulin Rouge has had a successful run in Boston and is coming to Broadway; people actually like what they’re creating. We, as a community, are rewarding unoriginality and this is why we should all be worried about the future of Broadway.
Written by Abby Jansen