Moulin Rouge! The Musical slammed online as ‘hypocritical’ as it shares an Australia Day post

Moulin Rouge! The Musical is in its final week of performances at Sydney‘s Capitol Theatre.

But the show appears to be going out with a bigger bang than expected as Twitter users slammed the production on Thursday for ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘virtue signalling’.

The musical shared a post on the Australia Day public holiday stating it would ‘mourn’ alongside First Nations people on their day of ‘losses and struggles’, despite continuing with that night’s performance.

‘We stand in solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and mourn with them, reflecting on their losses and struggles,’ the statement said.

‘We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we currently perform, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. 

‘We pay our respects to their Elders past and present. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.’

Musical theatre fans slammed the post, criticising the production for going ahead with the 7pm show on January 26 despite their statement. 

‘Hypocrites. If you really felt strongly about it then you’d boycott the event. But then again, you wouldn’t get paid,’ one person tweeted.

Another raged: ‘Why not put your money where your mouth is and cancel tonight’s show out of protest against Australia Day rather than trying to profit from politicising it?’

‘”We acknowledge that this is not our land, and we also acknowledge we won’t be doing jack s**t about it, other than virtue signal that we know stuff,”‘ a third mocked.

Others suggested the producers give ‘every Aboriginal [person] and those who identify as Aboriginal’ free tickets to the show on Australia Day, while another hoped the musical would be boycotted instead.

Entertainment reporter Peter Ford also chimed in to say he couldn’t understand why the production would go ahead after making such a controversial statement.

‘Australia Day, as always, the merits are debated. But I don’t get putting out a statement to say it’s a day of grief but you’re still performing the show tonight and making money on the day,’ he said.

Moulin Rouge! has three more sold-out performances in Sydney on Friday and Saturday before it heads to Perth’s Crown Theatre for its February run. 

From there, the production will move to the Lyric Theatre in Brisbane in May before returning to the Regent Theatre in Melbourne in August for its next season.