Alex Timbers Says Goodbye to Moulin Rouge! The Musical, the Show That ‘Expanded’ His World

Moulin Rouge! The Musical will bid farewell to Broadway on August 30 after seven years at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. The Tony-winning adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film has brought its pop-fueled vision of a bohemian Paris to life. Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek sat down with the production’s Tony-winning director Alex Timbers to look back on the show's seven-year Broadway run and its reach around the world.

Though Timbers is now an in-demand director, with a Tony Award for Moulin Rouge! and Just In Time also running on Broadway, his ascent was not immediate. “I would run and get coffee for people on Jersey Boys. That was my job,” says Timbers of his early career as a second assistant director on the 2006 Tony-winning show.

It was during this time that Jersey Boys writer Rick Elice gave Timbers advice he would carry with him to Moulin Rouge! “He said to me, ‘If you ever are lucky enough to have something that successful, go do it. Be there. Be present for it.’ So, to put up the national tour, to go to Germany, to go to the U.K., to check in on all this stuff; it's been wonderful to feel a connection with all these different productions happening all over the world. It’s been a huge part of the last decade, and it’s sad to see that it’s going.”

In many ways, Timbers had been preparing for Moulin Rouge! long before it came his way. “I had this downtown theater company [Les Freres Corbusier] that was doing historical work, sort of irreverent takes on history, mashing up pop. So the Baz Luhrmann aesthetic was something that I internalized deeply. He's such a huge influence,” says Timbers. “To get to take all those years of work and have it manifest in this way—working with the greatest living designers—it’s definitely something I dreamed of before I even knew Moulin Rouge! as a stage production would ever exist. Every time I go back and see [set designer] Derek [McLane]’s incredible installation at the Hirschfeld, it’s thrilling.”

Timbers still takes pleasure in watching audiences encounter McLane's immersive set. "Part of the goal of that show is really to transport you and take you to a time and place that didn’t even exist. This isn’t 1899 Paris; it’s its own sui generis version of that. When you walk into the Moulin Rouge at the Hirschfeld, even in year seven, it’s amazing to see people immediately pull out their iPhones like, 'Oh my God, I have to capture the feeling I’m feeling right now,'" says Timbers. “It makes me think about [the world premiere] in Boston and the first time the actors walked in and their jaws dropped.”

Recalling the development of Moulin Rouge! for the stage, Timbers says, “We went through the fundamentals of it as if it was an original musical. We sat in a hotel room—[book writer] John Logan, [music supervisor, co-orchestrator and arranger] Justin Levine and I—put it up on note cards and beat it out. We knew the movie existed, but Baz had really encouraged us to not stray from the spirit of the source material, but make it its own thing for the theater. Those two or three days were really crucial in blazing the path of what it is and the adaptive changes that happened."

The chemistry of the creative team was key to shaping the musical. “To get to work with John Logan and Justin Levine and [choreographer] Sonya Tayeh, and see them all create in a room together—these people who are real geniuses from disparate experiences—I think that mash-up of talents and intelligences mirrored the mash-up that is Moulin Rouge! I feel like we got really lucky with the alchemy of that.”

From August 18 through 29, original star Aaron Tveit will return to his Tony-winning role of Christian, a lovelorn American writer. His presence in the final weeks adds another link to Moulin Rouge!'s earliest days. "Bahiyah Hibah is the longest-running continuous cast member. She’s been there from the beginning. She’s extraordinary. And then Jeigh Madjus, who plays Baby Doll, and has also been there from the beginning," says Timbers. "To have them, and then to have Aaron Tveit returning, is an embarrassment of riches. It reminds you of that continuity all the way back to Boston."

A community theater production of Moulin Rouge! may be hard to imagine, but Timbers insists that the core tenets of the show don't depend on lavish production values. “I remember when I first saw Baz’s movie, I felt like, ‘OK, this is a wild treatise on love.’ It’s about daring greatly. It’s about impossible love. It’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s La Traviata. It’s Orpheus and Eurydice. Those fundamentals are the spine of the show—the DNA of it. We definitely leaned into the spectacle, the tawdry glamour of it, the maximalism. But I’m sure you could do it with a table and six chairs as well.”

As Moulin Rouge! comes to a close, Timbers is looking ahead to several new projects, including a musical adaptation of The Princess Bride. “Rick Elice and Bob Martin have written the book. It’s extraordinary,” he says. “[Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez] have written an amazing score. We’re in the casting process and still in development right now. We did some sword fighting a couple of months ago.”

Timbers will also helm “Weird Al” Yankovic’s musical, Dare to Be Stupid. “Weird Al came to be a guest on Gutenberg! The Musical! He was someone I loved from a young age. To see everyone—from the Local One stagehands and company management to Josh [Gad] and Andrew [Rannells]—just geek out over Weird Al, you realize there’s this Venn diagram between where pop and theater live, and Weird Al sits squarely within that,” says Timbers. “It’s powerful to be in a space with that guy, who is such an inspiration.”

Timbers says his years with Moulin Rouge! have shaped the director he is today. “I feel like I’ve learned so much about leadership. When you’re recreating a show in different places, you have all these beautiful artists bringing their own selves to it. How do you keep fidelity to what John wrote and what all these people created, and yet let people bring themselves to it? We would have these Zooms with 15 directing associates or resident directors, talking about, you know, 'Toulouse-Lautrec in Germany has a question about this. Can we modify this?' And someone in Australia would say, 'Well, we did that,'" says Timbers. “I could never have imagined having camaraderie with a group of directors like that. It’s extraordinary. It feels like my universe has expanded, and I feel like I’ve matured a lot in how to lead a group with intention, but also, hopefully, with a sense of looseness.”

Get tickets to Moulin Rouge! The Musical