Subplots: Moulin Rouge, the Musical (Part 3)
Why Story Spine Is Important, or Moulin Rouge the Musical, a Cautionary Tale, Part 3: Subplots
If you’ve read Part 1 and Part 2, this will not come as a surprise: Subplots are fun, they can give other characters a moment to shine, and add interest to your plot and the external happenings of your story, especially if you need to relieve emotional tension from a too-long-sustained primary plot.
But: a subplot must have its own shape and structure, and its characters must have wants and needs that connect fully to it. And—repeat after me—the subplot must connect to and move forward the primary story. It can’t just be some extra Thing out there whose stakes are not connected with the global story stakes.
***SPOILERS AHEAD SPOILERS FOR BOTH MOVIE AND BROADWAY SHOW SPOILERS LAST WARNING***
Roxanne…
In Part 2 I focused a good bit on Santiago and Nini, whose Act 2 opening number was delightful and fun and a little dangerous and full of promises of things to come. Unfortunately…the rest of the play did not deliver on those promises. Even at the very end of the play, Nini walked off somewhere on her own, and the final spots were on the guys: Christian, Santiago, Toulouse-Lautrec. (Maybe Zidler too? I don’t remember.) We opened the act with the Bad Romance; then it was basically done. They never tied it to the story.
In the movie, the Roxanne number was one of the most powerful in the entire piece. It had the Argentinian singing about a prostitute whose lover was driven mad from jealous and killed her, with the implication that he himself was struggling with this kind of jealousy over Nini as well as offering bitter advice to Christian. It was intercut with Christian walking away singing about his own jealousy, and Satine’s agony as she first steels herself to give her body to the Duke, and then refuses, and his assault of her, all in the context of this big ensemble tango, and it was incredibly effective. (Did the song, its lyrics, and the Argentinian singing with or about Nini connect to the main story? Nope, not really. It just hit on the tension and simmering emotion of the whole cast in this one pivotal moment.)
In the play, none of this happens. For one thing, Christian sings the song, not Santiago. He sings it, if I recall, under the influence of too much absinthe, hallucinating the whole nightmare dream thing. I honestly didn’t get it. It was like, “we don’t know what to do with this song, but people loved it in the movie so we have to get it in somewhere.”
It’s All About Power—Who Has It, Who Wants It
But what if they had really joined that number to the main story? Locked it all in, made everything support everything else? Here’s an alternate take; something else the writers could have tried:
Nini and Santiago engage in a fiery on-again-off-again passionate romance all through the rehearsal process. Meanwhile, Nini is coming onto the Duke on the regular; maybe she knows Satine is dying and wants to be the next star, maybe she wants Satine ousted before the show even starts. Santiago is pissed off every time he sees it and gets more and more jealous as the act progresses; he knows she’s into him, but that she’d dump him for the guy with the money in a heartbeat. After their first pas de deux there are at least 2 other moments during the act—these can be quick beats—where he catches her going after the Duke, she slinks over to him like “oh baby, you know it’s only you” and he jerks away and walks off, or maybe once he takes a step toward her and for a second she wonders if he would get violent with her, but he doesn’t. (He’s a good guy, our Broadway Santiago.) So by the time Nini spills to the Duke and he walks out demanding his ending to the play, and Satine voluntarily puts on her Serious Actress chops to go after him and make him feel better (which she doesn’t do in the play till Zidler tells her to, another golden agency moment squandered), everyone is furious.
So in this version, Santiago gets to say the line about never falling for a woman who would sell herself for money (in the play, they took it from the Argentinian and gave it to Zidler): he’s saying it to Christian but looking at Nini. “Roxanne” is now as much about them and their toxic romance as a cautionary tale for Christian, which by its very nature connects directly with the Christian/Satine jealousy dynamic. They work out their rage/passion on the tango dance floor, Christian wanders the streets of Paris, and Satine and the Duke have it out: he basically tells her if she doesn’t convince Christian to leave, and that she doesn’t love him, and promises to never see him again, he will have Christian killed. Just like in the movie, but here he says it directly to Satine and not through Zidler.
This is where the Duke claims his power over her, because he now holds the reins of both her want and her need, and she can do nothing but comply. And since the Duke is a megalomaniacal asshole, he probably gets off on it all.
In any case, the entire “Roxanne” scene becomes about the interplay of power and impotence, dominance and subjugation. Subplot and main story have joined in a way only a musical (or, to be fair, and opera) can—every character, with whatever agency the book gives them, all focusing on this one moment, letting all their arcs meet and cross in the same moment. It’s incredibly powerful.
Do Nini and Santiago wind up together by the end of the play? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe in the last scene she slinks up to him again, and he shuns her, realizing he’ll never be the most important thing for her, and goes off with his bromance buddies to seek freedom, beauty, truth, and love. Maybe he instead takes her in his arms and kisses her passionately, and she slinks off to their apartment with the promise of things to come, and he looks after her, and his part in the final statement of the bohemian ideals is “love,” and even though Christian lost his love, Santiago at least has found his. But one way or the other, close the loop.
Ironic as it might sound to say this after just writing 3 blog posts criticizing it, I really did enjoy the play—it was beautiful and opulent, alive and full of energy and excitement from well before the show even started when characters started coming out and being part of the setting, making us feel like we were in the club itself. The skill and energy of these people who can do these shows 8 times a week, with as much energy in the 8th as the first, is amazing and incredible, and I’m talking about ensemble members as much as leads. The music was well done, and I’m someone who generally doesn’t think much of jukebox musicals—I loved the way they worked newer music into the play that hadn’t existed in the original. And the band was on fire. And the sound engineering was flawless. There’s so much that goes into one of these shows that most people in the audience don’t even think about.
But the story—the story has to come first. It has to work. It has to make us wonder, love, hate, sit on the edge of our seats to see what comes next. People in those seats don’t think about story structure most of the time either—but it’s crucial for making us care about the flesh and blood people in front of us on the stage.
Tell good stories. And give them spines.
