MOULIN ROUGE! THE MUSICAL
- AH Magazine
- Jan 18
- 2 min read
Love, power, and music in Paris, 1899
You step into a space that instantly shifts the mood of the evening. Light moves across the audience, deep reds take over the walls, and Theater 11 Zürich briefly takes on the character of a Parisian cabaret. Moulin Rouge! The Musical arrives in Zurich as part of its world tour and plays at Theater 11 from 21 January to 1 March 2026.
The scene keeps changing. One moment it opens into a grand, glittering club, the next it tightens around a glance, a gesture, or a single line that brings the room to silence. Costumes flare and dissolve into red, light sweeps across faces, then the space opens again in full glow, carried by an ensemble that drives the energy of the night.
The story leads to Paris in 1899 and into the heart of Montmartre, at a time when art, nightlife, and ambition collide under one roof. Christian arrives as a young writer with faith in love and in the power of words. Satine stands at the center of the Moulin Rouge as the club’s star, the “Sparkling Diamond,” a face the audience remembers and a woman whose daily life depends on deals made far from the spotlight. Into their world steps the Duke of Monroth, a financier who wants the Moulin Rouge and sees Satine as part of his plan. Zidler runs the club as an impresario, trying to protect the space, the ensemble, and the rhythm of the night.
The show takes shape through a constant collision between romance and constraints. Feeling arrives quickly, followed by rules. In one moment, love feels like freedom, in the next it feels like risk. That shift holds attention, because every scene carries the sense that someone gains while someone else loses.
Music acts as the main storyteller. The production features more than 70 songs and draws on more than 160 years of music, shaped into new arrangements, with musical supervision, orchestration, and arrangements by Justin Levine. In several scenes, familiar songs lock together into a single sequence, and emotion unfolds in layers, as if the characters speak in lines everyone already carries. When Satine sings, the sound holds both promise and danger. When Christian sings, you hear belief at its most stubborn. The ensemble takes over whenever the room needs to widen, the pace needs to lift, or the evening needs a fresh surge.
A strong creative team shapes this finely tuned production. The production is directed by Alex Timbers, with a book by John Logan and choreography by Sonya Tayeh. The visual world is shaped by set designer Derek McLane and costume designer Catherine Zuber, with lighting design by Justin Townsend and sound design by Peter Hylenski. The musical won ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and received recognition for direction, choreography, orchestrations, scenic design, costumes, lighting, and sound.
For audiences in Zurich, this means evenings that carry both story and spectacle in the same breath. Paris in 1899 takes form through movement, light, and sound, and the story leads straight to the core of desire, ambition, and power, where a single decision can change the course of an entire night.
