I Am A Polar Bear

While I was in Paris to visit Notre-Dame, I wanted to find some other interesting things to do. I tend to repeat the same circle of tourist stops: the Eiffel Tower, Sacré-Cœur, the Arc de Triomphe, a boat trip. And while I enjoy those, I’m trying to do new things. Last time I was in Paris, I decided to go to the opera and to visit the Catacombs, because walking underground through tunnels of human bones is… well, it’s an experience. This time, after dithering over this and that and making lists of Gothic churches, it suddenly crossed my mind that I’ve never been to the Moulin Rouge. Well, now I have! Don’t worry, I’m well aware of the irony of being proud of finding something off the tourist circuit and picking the Moulin Rouge, which is probably the most expensive, most touristy and most visited club in the entire city.

Oh, and the timing of going to see the ultimate Paris showgirls a week after The Life of a Showgirl was released? Total coincidence, I booked all this in July (well, everything I was able to book), but it did briefly make me wonder if I needed to upgrade my outfit from “elegant attire” to “full on showgirl with feather and diamond headpiece”. I decided not to – I’m not the one on stage, after all, and you just look weird on the metro dressed like that. It was also far too late to change the colour scheme from red to orange, which was something else I considered, albeit even more briefly.

Adding the Moulin Rouge to my itinerary slightly scuppered my easyJet personal item-only packing, which was going to be so minimal it was laughable. You have to dress up for the Moulin Rouge. I dressed up for the opera and found I was the only one who bothered but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to keep taking the “elegant” dress code seriously. This is the Moulin Rouge! You have to dress up! So, what did I go for? I have two long-sleeved sequin mini-dresses, both bought for Christmas over the last few years and both spectacularly perfect for the Moulin Rouge. I think the gold one is a little more comfortable but I’m not sure pale gold looks quite as good on me as red; besides, the red one was a little lighter to pack in the personal item and it just screams Moulin Rouge. I added a mountain of red and gold costume jewellery, mismatched OTT earrings and a pair of little red glitter ballet flats that didn’t take up too much room in my bag and I was ready for the party!

Let’s start with the price, because this isn’t a cheap evening out. To be honest, a two-park day ticket to Disneyland Paris would only have been two-thirds of the price of this two-hour show. It cost me €156 for the 9pm evening show with no drink, which includes a €3 booking fee. The 11pm show starts at €118 on school nights and €133 at weekends but I didn’t fancy making my way across Paris alone at 1am, so I went for the earlier one.

You can upgrade to the VIP show at €275 on the Saturday or you can add half a bottle of champagne per person to the ordinary show for a total of €175. If you want to go all-out, you can turn up at 7pm for dinner, the show & drinks for €255 or go for the prestige gourmet dinner which I can’t find a price for and probably don’t actually want to know. There are lots of options and all of them are expensive! But this is both a must-do and a once-in-a-lifetime, so I’m accepting the price. Making up for it by flying easyJet and staying at the Ibis Budget.

As for getting there, the M2 metro stops right outside (and it’s 6 stops, just 8 minutes, no changes, from my hotel!) or there are four buses that stop in the vicinity. It’s not a hard place to find, being a massive red windmill in the middle of Paris. I did my research on that. There’s no one solid reason why there’s a windmill there or where the name came from but in the days before the city stretched quite as far as Montmartre, this area was known for milling and it’s most likely that the windmill is simply here so that people like me, 130 years later, can discover the otherwise-forgotten rural history of Montmartre. Why is it red? Why not? Because Moulin Rouge sounds and looks more dramatic than Moulin Blanc & Brun, I suppose. I’m deeply interested in the fact that two Paris icons, Moulin Rouge and the Eiffel Tower both opened in the same year, in 1889. As far as I can see, it’s entirely coincidence – the Eiffel Tower was supposed to be temporary, just there for the Paris Exposition which was held to celebrate the centenary of the Storming of the Bastille, and the Moulin Rouge was built to attract people to Montmartre, which at the time was kind of bohemian and artsy and not visited by the sort of people who had money with a capital M. I doubt if either was expected to become an icon of the city.

So here we are at a little after 8pm on Saturday night! Doors open at 8 but it didn’t particularly look like it was open yet so I joined everyone else on the other side of the road to take pictures before noticing a doorman letting people in through the place that looked like a restaurant on the left of the main entrance, underneath the windmill itself. You go in there and get your ticket checked, and then you go through a tiny corridor with a green and white tiled sign pointing downwards to Moulin Rouge and then you emerge into a great big red foyer with a massive chandelier, crystals over the door spelling out Bal du Moulin Rouge, cloakroom to the right, boutique to the left. Here you get your ticket scanned and someone will scroll, Star Trek-style, over a massive touchscreen to find your seat. It prints out a little slip of paper and then a waiter takes you into the auditorium and to your table.

This is the bit that, according to the reviews, throws people. It’s cabaret-style. You’re not sitting in neat rows like at a theatre. It’s like being at an overcrowded restaurant and you’ll almost definitely be sharing your table with strangers. I was at a table for 6 raised up just a little towards the back with a Canadian couple called Enzo and Josie and was delighted when the other 3 people who were presumably supposed to be at the table didn’t turn up. It meant I had room to fidget, because sitting at a table, sideways onto the stage, on a chair designed for dining, is not the most comfortable setup. Enzo was ok because the table behind him was a small round one for two, set back so he had some space behind him. I was ok because I had an empty seat on my right and opposite me. Josie was squished in between me, the barrier and the table behind us.

They had a bottle of champagne between them but since I don’t drink (not even the free champagne Enzo and Josie offered me, since they’re not big enough drinkers to get through a whole bottle between them in two hours) and had booked the no-drink ticket… well, I wanted something to drink. There was no bar visible and I soon discovered that the way the Moulin Rouge works is that a waiter will bring a menu to your seat. So I ordered a Coke from the next waiter and then a third one came along to take payment before the second returned with my drink – a bit bewildering when you think you’re about to have your order taken a second time because you don’t realise this place is a well-oiled machine that has been doing this for 130 years and of course they’re not going to get confused about who’s taking orders.

There was a band on the stage when I walked in, and a group of people who use the same dancing at Paris’s premier cabaret club that they do at family weddings in a gap at the front of the room. Fifteen or twenty minutes before showtime, they vanished and a glittering curtain was pulled across. Get yourself comfortable, they’re getting everything in position!

I’m not going to spoil the surprises – I even refused to watch the preview video on the website so that everything was a surprise. I will say that the stage moves around – that gap at the front where the people were dancing was suddenly filled by a stage and then I blinked and it was a gap again and then it reappeared and that happened throughout the show. Something happened in the first five minutes that I knew was going to happen the moment the dancers appeared on the stage – and frankly, anyone who’s ever seen any kind of live performance should expect it too and anyone who’s even vaguely aware of the concept of showgirls but the twelve people on the two tables behind us clearly didn’t because they did that whooping shrieking sort of laugh that middle class people do when they hear anything even faintly risqué as if they’re shocked and titillated at the same time.

The show is divided into four acts, which are separated by circus-style performers who come out onto the front bit of stage to entertain the audience while the set is quickly and quietly changed behind the curtain. We had a contortionist who I swear didn’t have a spine, we had a double-act who did a similar thing but using a human support rather than a bar, and what I initially took to be a 90s boyband pastiche which turned out to be the most incredible superhuman double dutch skipping act.

The acts themselves were an introduction that’s apparently in the garden of the Moulin Rouge, a set that I took to be “around the world” but which was actually about Indonesian pirates, the circus and then the Moulin Rouge from 1900 to today. It’s a spectacle of spectacles – lots of sequins and feathers and rhinestones and ruffles and bejewelled heels. Not as many glittery bras as I expected – I knew there was a certain amount of toplessness but I assumed it was confined to just one scene or one act. No, it’s all the way through. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. The Moulin Rouge is the jewel of the Parisian red light district but I assumed the price conferred a level of respectability on it these days. No, this is still very much the bawdy cabaret it’s always been. As I said earlier, the Moulin Rouge was originally opened to attract a wealthier clientele to the seedier artier corner of Paris, so I guess it’s always had higher than average prices for the sort of show that goes on in Montmartre. I’d be curious now to see a more typical show, with lower prices and presumably lower production values.

The show, advertised as two hours, is actually only an hour and a half but I hadn’t realised we were anywhere near the end when it dawned on me that we were getting the “wave and bow” from every act and performer who’d appeared. I thought we were still only an hour or so in. Despite how uncomfortable the seating is, the show itself flies by. I mean, yes, partly it flies by because it’s only three-quarters of the length you think it is. On the other hand, I did wonder how our show could finish at 11pm and the next audience could be got in ready for the second show to start at 11.30. It’s because there’s a whole hour to get 800-ish people out and another 800-ish in. That also means there isn’t time to sit and drink and chat afterwards. You have to go elsewhere, even if it’s only to the various bars attached to the Moulin Rouge, like the Machine and the Roof or just to go and roam around Montmartre.

I’ve seen quite a few reviews from people who were either unsatisfied with the show or who actually walked out – generally people who strongly disapproved of the half-nudity who hadn’t spotted it on the website beforehand, or people who’d missed the dress code and were furious that their shorts and flipflops weren’t suitable attire. Then there are a few people who think that the show is going to be a live performance of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 Moulin Rouge film. No, the film is about the dancing and performances and life of a showgirl at the Moulin Rouge and here you get to see that dancing and performance, and enough about their lives to realise this is not something I want for myself. Would definitely have it any other way. Those are all things you can find and should find out well in advance. It’s a borderline-respectable cabaret club, so there’s going to be nudity, there’s a dress code and it’s two hours of show dancing.

For me, I thought it was pretty spectacular. I know I probably sat there with the stupidest grin on my face throughout. During the second or third act, there was a particularly ridiculous costume and there were a couple of scenes that I simply hadn’t imagined in my wildest dreams and the costumes for the final scene got an audible “Wow!” out of me. I think it’s very expensive, which is why I probably wouldn’t do it again but I absolutely definitely don’t regret doing it once. I think if you want to see bawdy cabaret, there’s probably nowhere better in the whole world than the Moulin Rouge and it’s a great way to spend a night out in Paris.