At the Moulin Rouge
She’s barely nine weeks old at The Weekly’s photo shoot, but little Harley Rose is clearly at home in the limelight. The newborn bub takes centre stage in her mum Alinta Chidzey’s arms, wide-eyed with wonder at the decadent set sparkling all around her. “It feels like she’s been a part of this journey all the way along,” says Alinta, who was 37 weeks pregnant when she auditioned for the coveted role of Satine in the award-winning Broadway production of Moulin Rouge! The Musical, which opens in Melbourne in August.
The role, made famous by Nicole Kidman in Baz Luhrmann’s blockbuster film, required a dynamic audition and the mum-to-be didn’t miss a beat. “There was a moment in the audition where I’d just finished singing one song and the director said, ‘Great, now can you sing the next one.’ I was so puffed, I was like, ‘I just need to breathe for a second’,” she laughs. “It’s difficult to sing with a baby sitting on your diaphragm! Of course, I knew that once I’d given birth, I’d be fine but the fact that I was cast into this role fully pregnant, dancing around the room with a big belly, is wonderful.”
Navigating the two greatest roles of her life simultaneously is no mean feat for Alinta, who has long been a rising star of Australian stage and screen, and this role confirms her place as one of Australia’s leading ladies.
Melbourne’s beloved Regent Theatre has undergone a $19 million upgrade to become the romantic fin de siècle Paris, with the famous L’Amour sign and the iconic windmill setting the famous French scene. And with the global impacts of COVID, when Moulin Rouge! The Musical opens in Melbourne, it will be the only place in the world it’s showing.
“I think audiences are really hungry for this,” Alinta says, “and as performers we’ve been starved of doing what we love for the past year, so we are hungry to get out and entertain. Ironically this show is about artists trying to keep their theatre alive, which is exactly what our industry has been through, so it’s very close to home.” – Sue Smethurst