Page 42 Daily Mail, Friday, August 30, 2019
it’s friday!
PAINTING
T
HE stage interpre-
tation of Moulin
Rouge! — based on
Baz Luhrmann’s
2001 hit film starring
Nicole Kidman, Ewan
McGregor and Jim Broad-
bent — will open in London
early in 2021.
Carmen Pavlovic, the Austral-
ian producer behind the show,
which is a full blown hit at Broad-
way’s Al Hirschfeld Theatre,
declined to comment on the
transfer of director Alex Timbers’
scintillating, sensuous show.
It is powered by a marvellous
cast led by Karen Olivo, Aaron
Tveit, Sahr Ngaujah, Tam Mutu
and Danny Burstein; and
features plush, knock-out scenic
design and costumes by
Derek McLane and Catherine
Zuber. Hats off, too, to choreog-
rapher Sonya Tayeh and writer
John Logan.
Timbers confirmed that he and
his associates visited London
last week to check out the
Piccadilly Theatre.
But that’s all he would confirm
when he stopped by my seat at
the Hirschfeld.
He zoomed away up the aisle
before I could rugby tackle him
to ask for further information.
The auditorium in New York
has been turned into a dizzy-
ing haven of forbidden pleas-ure, complete with an elephant,
a windmill, ten sparkling
chandeliers and a passerelle for
the exquisitely attired show-
girls (and boys) to dance on.
There are dozens of pop
classics (a show album is due
out soon); and whoever secured
the song rights deserves a spe-
cial Tony award.
Informed ‘speculation’
suggests that Moulin Rouge!
will begin performances at
the Piccadilly sometime in
January 2021.■
NOAH Baumbach’s movie
Marriage Story, a triumph
for the filmmaker (and Netflix).
Baumbach uses his lens to
focus on the lingering break-up
of a couple — an actress and
her theatre director husband —
played by Scarlett Johansson
and Adam Driver, right,
giving the best performances
of their careers.
There’s a custody battle, too.
There’s so much going on in
this masterpiece of
heartbreaking domesticity that
I will be seeing it a second time
at the Telluride Film Festival,
and again at the BFI London
Film Festival on October 6. To
cap it all, both Johansson and
Driver sing perfectly pitchednumbers from Stephen
Sondheim’s Company.
The film also has high quality
work from Laura Dern, Julie
Hagerty, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta
and Merritt Wever.■
EDWARD Norton and Gugu
Mbatha-Raw, who will be
at Telluride with Norton’sadaptation of Jonathan
Lethem’s novel Motherless
Brooklyn. It’s about a
gumshoe with Tourette’s
(played by Norton, who also
directs). Norton and Mbatha-
Raw (as a town planner living
above a jazz joint) have the
juiciest roles.WATCH
OUT FOR ...
Hiddleston in a huddle with fans
TOM Hiddleston, Zawe
Ashton and Charlie Cox have
built on the work they did
with director Jamie Lloyd for
Harold Pinter’s Betrayal,
which was part of the
acclaimed Pinter At The
Pinter season earlier this
year: digging deeper into
their characters for the
show’s Broadway transfer.
As Lloyd observed after I
saw Betrayal at the Bernard
B. Jacobs Theatre: ‘They’re
amazing people to work
with ... always searching for
more’. And their perform-
ances in New York are richer
as a result.
The Jacobs was packedsolid on a hot summer
Monday night. And I was
struck by the kindness
Hiddleston showed later to
fans who had waited for him
at the stage door.
He didn’t know I was there,
so it wasn’t an act.
I’m reminded of Michael
Crawford’s comment to me
when he opened on Broad-
way in Phantom Of The
Opera: ‘You don’t know about
success until you’ve made it
on Broadway.’
I think Hiddleston, right
with those fans in NYC, is
deservedly experiencing a
sense of that as he makes his
way on 45th Street.Baz
Marvellous: Karen Olivo as
Satine in Moulin Rouge!Picture: BRUCE GLIKAS/WIREIMAGETHE TOWN
ROUGE!