MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL - REVIEW OF 2026 PRODUCTION AT THE CAA ED MIRVISH THEATRE

Reviewed by James Karas

MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL by John Logan is back at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre about seventeen months after its last opening at the same venue. I guess you can’t put a good thing down. It has an almost  different cast and the same boisterous performance that audiences expect.

The formula for success seems simple. Give them glitz, glitter, loud music, louder music and louder still. Never let quiet moments last long but bring on the dancers, send in the ensemble, turn on the lights and sound show and keep the audience enthralled. Hoots and howls, please. Show beautiful women dancing the cancan, the one where they throw their skirts to the face and reveal what men want women to reveal. Add beautiful dresses and a love story. Make sure the audience expresses its approval with screams at the end of the major numbers. Now you have a spectacle and a hit.

The Moulin Rouge club in 1890 has a spectacular show starring the gorgeous Satine (Gabriela Carrillo). The ebullient Harold Zidler (Robert Petkoff) is the master of ceremonies and the club has singers, dancers and acts  to please all the upper crust and others of Paris. Unfortunately, it lacks money. The unscrupulous Duke of Monroth (Aaron C. Finley) has lots of it and he is prepared to buy it and the people that work there. He is more specifically interested in Satine, including and perhaps especially her body.

Robert Petkoff and the Company of the 2025 touring production of 
MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL. 
Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade.

Toulouse-Lautrec (Alex Nicholson)  and Santiago (Danny Birgos) want to put on a show and they meet Christian (sung by understudy Luke Monday in the place of Ryan Vasquez), an innocent-abroad American, who is a singer and composer and wants to make it in Paris. They arrange for him to sing/audition for Satine. She is expecting  the Duke and thinks that Christan is the randy Duke who wants her body. A series of double-entendres follow as when she asks Christian to sit and he says he prefers to stand. She bends over expecting coitus. He wants to sing standing. Hilarious scene. 

The love between Christian and Satine will continue until the end of the musical with the usual zigzags of passion, separation, betrayal and eternal love. The disgusting Duke will persist in his lechery. Santiago and Toulouse-Lautrec as well as Harold will experience the ups and downs of running a club but the plot will never interfere with the ingredients of a spectacular musical outlined above.

The songs that decorate the show are all borrowed from other composers and for many people they have the benefit of familiarity. The voices are at least adequate and at the orchestral volumes and other shenanigans of the show you are not allowed much time (nor are the singers) to display vocal beauty but we do get some vocal prowess in an uphill battle with the instrumentalists.

The acrobatic and erotic dances with the rich display of gorgeous bodies dressed to show it are a major component of the spectacle. Choreographer Sonya Tayeh does stunning work in the dance routines.

Derek McLane scenic design is (I have to use the same word) spectacular.

Catherine Zuber’s costumes from the dancers to the samples of haute couture are marvelous. Lighting and sound, the number of behind-the-scenes creative people is breathtaking and with the finely coordinated spectacle at hand, there is no surprise in that.

Director Alex Timbers has a huge and complex show to put together and pass on to others to manage and the number of people involved is awesome. So is the result.      
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Moulin Rouge! The Musical  by John Logan (book) opened on April 23 and  continues until May 10, 2026, at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, 244 Victoria St. Toronto, Ontario. www.mirvish.com

James Karas is the Culture Editor of The Greek Press, Toronto