{"id":922979,"date":"2026-07-09T10:41:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T10:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/922979\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T10:41:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T10:41:19","slug":"moulin-rouge-the-musical-returns-to-broadway-at-the-hobby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/922979\/","title":{"rendered":"Moulin Rouge! The Musical Returns to Broadway at the Hobby"},"content":{"rendered":"

The year is 1899 in Paris and the Moulin Rouge is a cabaret club where everything is splendidly over the top. Despite this, the club\u2019s finances are shaky and a somewhat desperate club owner, Harold Zidler, places his hopes on the Duke of Monroth to bankroll them out of their misery.<\/p>\n

Zidler assigns Satine, the club\u2019s star and a courtesan, to the Duke. In wanders Christian, a young American Bohemian along with his friends Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Santiago and soon enough Satine must decide between saving the club and her growing attraction to Christian.<\/p>\n

And befitting the Belle \u00c9poque era, she has consumption, an illness she is keeping secret from everyone else.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Moulin Rouge! The Musical,<\/strong> winner of 10 Tony Awards, back in Houston with updated music courtesy of the national tour coming to Broadway at the Hobby. \u00a0Robert Petkoff (Broadway: Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Ragtime, All The Way, Anything Goes, Spamalot, Fiddler on the Roof and Epic Proportions) has the Harold Zidler role.<\/p>\n

\u201cHarold is a bad businessman. He\u2019s a little venial as the Duke says. He\u2019s got a little corruption running through his veins.\u00a0 At heart, he wants to keep this world alive, he wants to keep it afloat. \u00a0He is part con man, part salesman, part father figure. All of these things rolled up which is what makes it so interesting for me to play,\u201d Petkoff says.<\/p>\n

\"\"Robert Petkoff and the touring company of Moulin Rouge! The Musical. Credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade<\/p>\n

So why if this cabaret is so popular, why is it at risk of going under? \u201cI suspect that Harold is skimming money and I think that he\u2019s been extravagant,\u201d Petkoff says. \u201cHe wants to make the Moulin Rouge extraordinary so he\u2019s outspending what he\u2019s taking in.\u00a0 I think he likes to party with the patrons more then he likes to manage the books.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Baz Luhrmann\u2019s movie first came out, half the audience and critics loved it; the others hated it.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, Baz Luhrmann\u2019s style is so extraordinary; it\u2019s frenetic and energetic. When the story starts it\u2019s like \u2018Where do I look?\u2019 There\u2019s so many things happening.\u00a0 As it goes deeper into the story, some of that settles down a little bit and gets more serious. In a way he\u2019s trying to capture that bohemian spirit in the Moulin Rouge \u2013 a place where the wealthiest people of Paris mingled with the poorest people of Paris. \u201c<\/p>\n

The musical, in fact, continues that theme of extravagance. Satine enters on a trapeze style swing and will be flying out over the first few rows of Sarofim Hall seating at the Hobby Center.<\/p>\n

Asked for the differences between being on tour and on Broadway \u2013 he\u2019s been in a number of touring shows as well \u2013 is the audience, Petkoff says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest difference is that every couple of weeks you\u2019re picking up and going to a different city. On Broadway I think the audiences are for the most part, tourists coming from all over the world and all over America. But what\u2019s lovely about touring is you get to go into a community, and you get to have that specific community\u2019s response to your show.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIt absolutely does vary from city to city and sometimes with wonderful surprises,\u201d he says as sometimes the audience responses upset all the actors\u2019 preconceived notions.<\/p>\n

While extolling the benefits of the \u201cshare experience\u201d that is theater, Petkoff mentions that \u201cWe very much encourage the audience at the very end to sing along with us.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the very end there\u2019s a little mega mix of different songs that I sing the line and then the audience will sing the line. It\u2019s really fun when people sing along and do some of the movements that we\u2019re doing. \u00a0It\u2019s nice to lighten the mood before everybody goes home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Performances are scheduled for July 14-19 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday and 2 p.m. Saturday and 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday at the Hpbby Center, 800 Bagby. For more information, call 713-315-7625 or visit thehobbycenter.org or broadwayatthehobbycenter.com $50-$185.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The year is 1899 in Paris and the Moulin Rouge is a cabaret club where everything is splendidly…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":922980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5130],"tags":[37018,37017,12730,4345,134221,358,3187],"class_list":["post-922979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-broadway-at-the-hobby","tag-hobby-center","tag-homepage","tag-houston","tag-moulin-rouge","tag-texas","tag-tx"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116889603687795949","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/922980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}