GO FRANCE:The Moulin Rouge – home of the cancan – has been packing them in for more than a century. CONOR POWERtakes his seat during a break in the French capital
BEFORE I BEGAN planning to go there, I must confess, I didn’t know the Moulin Rouge still existed. I imagined it as some charming but decrepit Paris music hall long since swallowed up by the modern world, along with its long-legged dancers. But the Bal du Moulin Rouge is still packing them in by the thousand every night.
It first opened its doors on October 6th, 1889. From the very beginning it has featured the quadrille réaliste– or, as it's better known, the cancan – in its repertoire. The current show, La Féerie, which has been running since 1999, is staged twice a night, entertaining patrons from every walk of life.
When you emerge from the art-deco-style Blanche metro station at night, it is as if someone has just switched on a blast of the cancan at full volume: the lights of Pigalle glitter all around, and there in the centre of it all is the Moulin Rouge, its rooftop red windmill twirling in the shadow of Sacré Coeur Basilica.
People are queuing outside, and the atmosphere is buzzing, with a United Nations of tourists photographing one another in front of the venue. Some men who I imagine are pimps, pickpockets or drug dealers look on.
Inside the Moulin Rouge, ushers hurry between tiers of tables that face the wide half-moon stage. Everyone looks relaxed and elegant in the soft light, and champagne buckets are at every table. Rich red fabric adorns the ceiling, and turn-of-the-century signs and posters on the walls add to the belle époque flavour.
We are at a table halfway up, which we share with Hubert and Céline, a couple in their 60s from outside the city of Tours, who have been given the tickets as a retirement gift, and a talkative young Australian woman named Kerry, who has just arrived from Ireland, to wrap up her tour of Europe with some cabaret.
The show begins with all the gusto and razzmatazz of a particularly spectacular entry in the John Player Tops competition, albeit somewhat more sophisticated . . . and without the tops.
About two-thirds of the performers are female, and your eyes are kept constantly busy, looking from one cast member to the other as the superfit singers and dancers fill the stage, arriving in seamlessly choreographed moves and in varying states of exotic undress.
In all there are four main spectacular scenes, each involving elaborate sets, live singing, colourful costumes and the occasional jaw-dropper. In one scene, for example, an enormous glass water tank materialises on stage; one of the Moulin beauties, wearing just a thong and a smile, dives in for a short swim with five pythons.
The cancan, which is saved for one of the final scenes, goes down a treat, with the audience clapping and whooping along. Even the performers seem to like it the best.
Between the glittering scenes are some high-quality novelty acts, including an impossible-looking, and wince-inducing, balancing act, a brilliant ping-pong-ball drummer and a ventriloquist. Kerry finds him the funniest, giving a particularly loud whoop when a volunteer plucked from the audience turns out to be from her home town of Adelaide.
The show lasts almost two hours, our 9pm performance finishing just in time to make way for the 11pm crowd. While we wait to leave we chat with the others at our table. The view is unanimous: our tickets were well worth the price.
The couple from Tours had approached tonight with the greatest level of trepidation but been most impressed by the sheer technical exuberance of the show. “I have never seen so many beautiful women in one place,” Hubert said, visibly stunned at the statistical overload. Kerry says the show was fantastic – and, with her visit to Newgrange, a highlight of her European adventure.
Going to the Moulin Rouge is a spectacular, cheesy, saucy, spellbinding, hilarious, dazzling, giddy roller coaster of a night’s entertainment, seasoned with champagne and containing much of what you would expect from a night on the town in the City of Light.
If this is what centuries of French cultural and political evolution has bequeathed to us, then vive la révolution.
Bal du Moulin Rouge, 82 Boulevard de Clichy, Paris, 00-33-1-53098282, www.moulinrouge.fr. Entry costs €89-€99, including a half-bottle of champagne, or €145-€175 including a half-bottle of champagne and dinner. Paris Vision (www.parisvision.com) is one of a number of companies that offers packages; its Paris by Night deal includes a show at the Moulin Rouge after dinner at the Eiffel Tower for €221
Where to stay and eat
Where to stay
Le Relais Montmartre. 6 Rue Constance, 00-33-1-70642525, www.relaismontmartre.fr.
As it is in the heart of Paris’s principal red-light district, the area around the Moulin Rouge is better for looking around than for staying in. If you want to be close to the venue, however, then you could do worse than opt for this three-star boutique hotel, which will give you a good flavour of Montmartre’s bohemian atmosphere.
Where to eat
Café des Deux Moulins. 15 Rue Lepic, 00-33-1-42549050. An obligatory stop for film fans, this cafe is where Audrey Tautou’s character worked in Amélie. Everything is as it was in the film, apart from the tobacco counter, and if you don’t mind a proliferation of fellow tourists taking photographs around you, it’s a pleasant place for lunch.
Le Zinc des Cavistes. 5 Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, 00-33-1-47708864. This is one of the smartest restaurants in the area, with engaging staff and good food. Evening menus start at €17.
Le Sancerre. 35 Rue des Abbesses, 00-33-1- 42580820. As bohemian an eatery as you’re going to get, and a very popular haunt, with its terrace full at most hours of the day and night. A five-minute walk from the Moulin Rouge.
Go there
Aer Lingus (www.aerlingus. com) flies to Paris Charles de Gaulle from Dublin, Cork and Belfast. Air France (www.air france.ie) flies from Dublin and Shannon. Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies to Beauvais, 80km from Paris, from Dublin and Shannon.
5 facts
The shows are seen by 600,000 people a year.
Between them they drink 240,000 bottles of champagne.
Half of them are French.
Fourteen nationalities appear on stage.
The shows involve 1,000 costumes of feathers, rhinestones and sequins.