The positive audience response to the Broadway production of “Moulin Rouge” highlights the value of escapism in modern musicals- an art form increasingly oversaturated with much more gritty and dark stories.

Many modern musicals feel the need to place nuanced storytelling firmly above aesthetic beauty, but having art that is beautiful for the sake of being beautiful is still important.

Decadence is often frowned upon as it doesn’t seem to serve a larger and more sophisticated purpose beyond being beautiful.

Moulin Rouge received some criticism for its one-dimensional and cliche characters and story, along with the show’s focus on creating an entertaining spectacle as it was seen as a failed attempt to create a ‘good’ show.

This is part of a larger trend seen in modern musicals: simple sets and complicated stories that feature dark subjects tend to be more critically acclaimed.

These shows are rightfully praised as beautifully complex and still relatable, but it seems that beauty is only recognized when it is grounded in realism and sorrow.

Shows that are critically acclaimed and also very visually beautiful and stylized, such as Chicago and Cabaret, often use visual beauty to show the ultimate meaninglessness of such superficiality.

In Chicago, fame and power hungry murderers are deemed innocent in court because of their superficial beauty and appeal.

Like Moulin Rouge, Cabaret is a musical that is also set in a European nightclub.

While the two shows have a few similarities on a surface level, Cabaret’s visual beauty is disingenuous and misleading.

The idea that life is beautiful under the facade of the decadent, visually pleasing setting of the nightclub is a lie.

Cabaret is a cautionary tale that expounds on the social dangers of superficiality and decadence.

This is not the case with Moulin Rouge, because its features are beautiful for the sake of being beautiful.

Everything is heightened and exaggerated to an almost dizzying degree, from the larger than life characters to the bright and vibrant stage.

As New York Times critic Ben Brantley puts it, Moulin Rouge has “the febrile energy you may associate with the wilder parties of your youth, when gaudy nights seemed to stretch into infinity”.

The usual priorities of a show, such as characters and plot, are instead used to further the larger purpose of Moulin Rouge: to be beautiful in a world that is rarely so.

The value of beauty and entertainment that does not exist to serve to reveal a more complicated theme is typically looked down upon because it seems too fantastic.

The escapism that unrealistic and impossibly beautiful worlds offered in these shows should not be overlooked in favor of realism and dark subjects.

Modern musicals should have space for both types of stories and value the entertaining beauty that shows such as Moulin Rouge are filled with without needing a deeper reason to justify its existence.