The Moulin Rouge

Ahhhh the Moulin Rouge. Let's start at the beginning. 

Matt: We booked our tickets for the 9pm Wednesday show online with France Tourism. Unfortunately they needed printing, and so when we first arrived in Montmartre our priority was finding an Internet cafe with a printer.

We went into McDonalds to use their free Wi-Fi to find one. We couldn't find any. Possibly, due to the prevalence of free Wi-Fi like the one we were using they have all gone out of business. Ironic, huh?

We knew that the Centre Pompidou which we visited 2 days ago had a library with printing services built in, so we made our way across town to there. It was closed, along with the rest of the museum. 

Thankfully, they left their free Wi-Fi on, and we used it to find another Internet cafe nearby. We found the cafe and printed our tickets. While I was there, Rachel encountered two Americans who were having a bad day, much like we had when we first arrived in France.

The young couple were both engrossed in their tasks. The man was busy googling "how to live cheaply in Paris" and the woman was  writing a long email to her mother which included the phrase "everything's so much harder here than in America!"

Poor kids. It made me very glad to have the motorhome. If we have a series of awful days, we can just drive to the coast and relax in an Aire for a few days. Not so for people who have to "live cheaply in Paris". 

Rachel: With tickets in hand, we lined up to see the show. We had been asked to wear formal attire, which means Matt wore what he usually wore, and I enjoyed getting dressed up after dressing like a tourist for the last month. 

From the moment you step in you are transported to another place. This, I think, is the best state of mind to be in when visiting the Moulin Rouge. Imagine it's a different time and a different place. It seemed to work quite well for me. Funnily enough we were seated at a table of 8 with 6 other Australians, heralding from Brisbane, Perth and Griffith. We all had a chat as we sipped on the bottle of Champagne included with our ticket and waited for the show to begin. 

It's very difficult to describe what happened over the next two hours and I would hate to give the wrong impression. I shall do my best. For those intending to visit I suggest you  stop reading now as I'd hate to ruin it for you. 

The show is essentially a cabaret show with 6 singers singing mostly in French (although we're still unsure if it was live or not) and 60 dancers. Unfortunately I wouldn't really rate the choreography or dancing that highly. Luckily I had been warned of this before hand and had lowered my expectations. It was still entertaining nonetheless. I was shocked to recognise one of the three lead guys as David Tandy, a Novocastrian who danced at Marie Walton-Mahons a few years ahead of me. Small world indeed. There were different sets for each section of the show with themes such as Pirates, The Circus and of course the French Can Can. 

The real highlight however is the costumes. There were more sequins and feathers than if a Miss Donna tap concert and Wayne Rogers show made a baby, and that baby took steroids. Now, how do I bring this up... There was something very wrong with these costumes. In an important place where there should have been fabric there was none. Instead there were just boobies. Lots and lots of boobies. Occasionally they were covered partially with beads or feathers, but the majority of the time the girls were wearing normal showgirl costumes just with giant wedgies and holes cut out where the boobies are (how many times can I say boobies in this post I wonder...). 

This is where clarification is needed. The costumes seemed so normal and did not draw attention that, after the initial shock, you actually forgot they were there. Or at least I did, I can't vouch for the male audience. It was not provocative or seedy. There were not men leering at the women and the women were not degraded or cheapened. It was what it was. Just girls dancing, albeit with holes in their tops. 

There were also other things to keep the crowd in awe such as the worlds fastest juggler, a women who swims with pythons after the whole stage rises to reveal a giant tank, a ventriloquist and a couple who do stunts and acrobatics. The crowd, including us, were wooing, gasping and cheering in amazement. 

Overall it was a great night out. If I only see one Cabaret in my life, and I probably only will, I'm glad it was here. I do think Mr Baz Luhrmann took a great deal of creative license when making Moulin Rouge though. We didn't see Nicole Kidman's boobies once!