“Moulin Rouge,” which debuted as a feature film in Los Angeles in 2001, had a quite circuitous route back to Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre to debut as a play in July as “Moulin Rouge! The Musical.”
The musical is currently the highest-selling tour of the 2021-2022 season for both average weekly gross and cumulative gross against other new tours of the season. This is welcome news for the live performance community – earlier this year the LA Performing Arts & Reopening Survey showed that attendance was still at 50% of pre-pandemic levels at the start of the year.
“Moulin Rouge! The Musical” earned 10 Tony awards, including Best Musical, in 2020, the most since the debut of “Hamilton.” Encouraged by its initial critical and box office success on Broadway, the production planned for an ambitious national rollout, with L.A.’s Pantages Theatre as a key stop. The tour was impacted by Covid, which shelved the L.A. debut to November 2020. It was subsequently pushed again to its current run because of the rise of the Omicron variant.
Show producer Carmen Pavlovic told the Business Journal that the delays required a lot of creative solutions to problems and the willingness to “change, undo and redo plans.”
As many office workers moved to Zoom, so did the audition and casting process for theatrical productions. Pavlovic and her fellow producers were able to audition performers remotely, and while she said “Nothing really beats an in-person audition,” she noted that an element of remote casting will likely become a permanent part of the business.
The New York Times recently cited a study of 143 performing arts organizations in North America by TRG Arts that found that the number of tickets sold was down by 40% in the 2021-22 season, compared with before the pandemic. The study blamed ongoing Covid concerns and changing habits around attending live performances.
Shows at the Pantages still require attendees to wear masks, and there remains the possibility that a principal cast member may have to sit out due to infection. Still, the show must go, on and Pavlovic noted that the “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” tour did not need to make any production compromises in the move to the Pantages, which is owned by the Nederlander Organization. “The show is what we call ‘deluxe maximalism,’” Pavlovic said. “It’s so opulent and over the top.”
It also takes an over-the-top effort to get the show on the road. The tour travels with 13 trucks with 64 members of the company — 35 cast members, three musicians, six managers, 18 crew, one physical therapist and one merchandise manager.
The show will run at the Pantages until September and heads to Costa Mesa in November.
