Betting on ‘Rouge!’ They can-can do it
THE big event on Broadway this week is taking place on the Lower East Side, where “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” is having a no-expense-spared workshop.
Heavy-hitters, including Broadway’s powerful landlords — the Shuberts, the Nederlanders and Jujamcyn Theaters — will be at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center on Suffolk Street on Thursday and Friday, when Global Creatures, producer of “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and the maker of life-size-dinosaur shows, seeks investors. Sources say the show’s budget is about $20 million. Baz Luhrmann, who directed the original 2001 “Moulin Rouge!” movie, will be on hand to see what
Alex Timbers (“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”) has done with the lush, sensual world of the celebrated Montmartre, Paris, cabaret.
John Logan, who won a Tony for “Red,” has written the book, and the score is a grab bag of pop songs, including “Rhythm of the Night,” “Roxanne,” “Like a Virgin” and the old Nat King Cole standard “Nature Boy.” Karen Olivo (“West Side Story”) is playing Satine, the singer and courtesan, opposite Aar
on Tveit (“Next to Normal”) as the struggling writer who falls in love with her. Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor played those roles in the movie. Though Olivo and Tveit have only been signed for the workshop, it’s a good bet they’ll go with the show to Broadway.
“Moulin Rouge! The Musical” opens this summer at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, once home to the premieres of “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Porgy and Bess,” “Follies” and “La Cage aux Folles.” Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote several songs for “Oklahoma!” on a grand piano that used to be in the ladies’ lounge.
“Moulin Rouge!” is bound for New York, but Global Creatures is being cagey about when. The company’s “King Kong” opens at the Broadway Theatre next fall. The betting is that “Moulin Rouge!” holds off until fall 2019 — so it won’t compete with “King Kong” for audiences, Tonys and bananas.
THE eggnog at “Home for the Holidays” has curdled. The show, featuring Danny Aiello crooning Christmas carols, was slated to run through Dec. 30 at the August Wilson Theatre but has been losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, production sources say.
The producers have been pumping in cash to pay the theater expenses, but they’re tapped out. A closing notice went up this week, but the producers are trying to keep it quiet. They’re praying ticket sales will pick up while they try to scrape together more cash to keep the show going through the holidays.
If not, the show folds Sunday, the same day “M. Butterfly” goes down.
“We brought to Broadway a concert experience that has given the joy of the season to our enthusiastic audiences,” the producers of “Home for the Holidays” said. “The investors are 100 percent behind this production.”