It is over twenty years now since Baz Luhrmann’s fiesta of a
film exploded into cinemas and he had a hand in this stage adaptation which first
opened in 2018 and came to London in autumn 2021 and has been playing to packed
houses ever since. A celebration of “truth, beauty, freedom and love”, it’s
broad appeal has been widened by the addition of a number of songs written
after the film so it has a more contemporary feel yet the lynchpin tunes are
still in place. It’s a concept Luhrmann himself once described as a
“preposterous conceit” but it works. This has been the first chance I’ve had to
see it and as a fan of the movie I can only applaud what this production has
done to make essentially the same story work in a different medium.
