THE NEWYORKER, AUGUST 5 & 12, 2019 75
year-old Feiffer gets cheeky with Che-
khov’s delicate realism, sending up his
habits of exposition and repetition, along
with his play’s central conceit. “Wait sorry
really quick maybe this is dumb but like
why can’t we just go back to Moscow?”
Irina asks. Every time the holy city is
mentioned, the sisters whip around to
gaze at an enlarged picture postcard that
glimmers, like a mirage, on the back wall.
Better to worship that idealized image
than to admit that their unhappiness will
follow them wherever they go.
Cullman keeps this ninety-minute
piece moving along with a quick-cut,
absurdist pacing that owes a lot to the
A.D.H.D. style of TV shows like “30
Rock” and “BoJack Horseman.” So it
comes as a surprise when the play be-
gins to deepen and darken, to make room
for Chekhov’s questions about loss, sur-
vival, and hope. The sensitive, comedic
cast is uniformly excellent, but I was
most moved by Chris Perfetti, who gives
sardonic expression to Masha’s dream-
iness and rage. The decision to cast a
man as one of the sisters can seem like
a gag (Perfetti wears a black silk skirt,
which gives off a gothic rustle when he
moves), but it turns serious when we re-
alize how much Masha cherishes her
sense of her own difference. Stuck in a
stultifying marriage, she’s in love with
the dashing lieutenant-colonel Vershi-
nin (Alfredo Narciso), whose optimism
she secretly clings to. “In two or three
hundred years,” Vershinin is always say-
ing, “everything will change!” The oth-
ers scoff, but Vershinin means it, and so
did Chekhov. We justify our suffering
with the thought that our descendants
may inherit a better world. In the mean-
time, we turn our bloredom into art.
“
M
oulin Rouge!” always seemed
destined to become a Broadway
musical. Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 movie
was a pop-fuelled fantasia set in a Belle
Époque Paris that was mostly constructed
on soundstages in Australia; theatrical
artifice was the substance of its aesthetic
and the thrust of its minimal plot. Now
it is a musical (directed by Alex Timbers,
at the Al Hirschfeld), and the form fits
the material like a cancan dancer’s glove.
The movie was a hit, as was the soundtrack,
but it never really got my heart rate up:
too much schmaltz spooned in between
songs. What a difference it makes, in this
story about the delights and demands of
spectacle, to see it on a stage, where we
can get close to what makes performance,
and performers, real: sweat trickling down
a collarbone, a little rip in a pair of fish-
net stockings, the throbbing moment
after a big dance number ends, when the
ensemble holds a pose as their collective
pulse gallops wildly on.
Get to the theatre early, so you can
see the actors begin to appear, in their
corsets and codpieces, on Derek Mc-
Lane’s appropriately maximalist set,
which gives priority to the film’s lush
reds. It is 1899; Christian (Aaron Tveit),
an American romantic in Paris, falls in
with an amiable group of Montmartre
artists and bohemians led by the spunky
Toulouse-Lautrec (Sahr Ngaujah). They
need a songwriter for their new play;
Christian is just the man for the job, so
off they go to the Moulin Rouge, to re-
cruit the courtesan Satine (the wonder-
ful Karen Olivo) to star in their produc-
tion. It’s love at first sight for Christian,
but Satine has been promised by the
club’s impresario, Harold Zidler (Danny
Burstein, having fun), to the Duke of
Monroth (Tam Mutu), whose lucre
Zidler needs in order to keep the lights
on and the absinthe flowing. Add a touch
of consumption to the proceedings, and
you have the makings of melodrama.
Tveit’s Christian is adorable, a Dis-
ney prince come to life, but the Duke,
louche and slinky—“Sympathy for the
Devil” is his signature tune—steals the
show; if I were Satine, I’d throw my lot
in with him. Still, what little story there
is in “Moulin Rouge!” is almost too
much. We are here for the music, which
rolls through the audience in wave after
wave of dopamine; there’s nothing like
hearing the orchestra strike up your
song—or Elton John’s “Your Song.” The
credits take up two pages of tiny type
in the program, a testament to what
must be one of the great producing feats
in recent Broadway history, and the
score has been updated so that, along
with Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade,” we
now get a big hoofing ensemble rendi-
tion of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,”
and Olivo belting out Beyoncé’s “Sin-
gle Ladies” and Katy Perry’s “Firework.”
A cast album is in the works, for which
the rights had to be secured all over
again. Zidler would be proud. Behind
all the glitz, the show is pure biz. ♦
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