He fills that space like nobody else.”Īnd yet, Jackman’s musical appearances on the boards have been limited-it turned out that his star quality translated to the screen (and the box office), as he has demonstrated in no uncertain terms, starting with his feral turn as Wolverine in 2000’s X-Men, and its various sequels. As The Music Man’s choreographer, Warren Carlyle, recalls: “From the first minute of Oklahoma!, it was clear that he was born to be on the stage. With only leading roles in Melbourne productions of Beauty and the Beast and Sunset Boulevard under his belt, Jackman gave a star-making performance, establishing himself as a one-of-a-kind musical-theater actor in the classical tradition, who nonetheless felt completely of the moment, with seemingly effortless charisma and a hint of mischief. Whatever Jackman may have lacked vis-à-vis a young David Anderson, by the time he got cast in Trevor Nunn’s 1998 revival of Oklahoma! at London’s Royal National Theatre, he had clearly upped his game. For a second, largely thanks to his flawless deadpan and my hazy knowledge of Australian politics, I believe him. After a pause, he adds, stoically, “David Anderson was Harold Hill.” I jokingly ask, “Yeah, but where is he now?” and Jackman tells me that he went on to become prime minister of Australia. (It was a chance, he says, to meet girls.) “I was Salesman Number 2,” Jackman tells me. Jackman, when we speak, seems to have studied The Music Man with the exactitude of a Shakespearean scholar, and that may be because he made his stage debut in a production of the show at his all-boys high school in Sydney. But they end up falling for each other, and Hill gives up his swindling, vagabond ways to settle down with her and organize the boys into a real, if terrible, marching band. The town’s sharp-tongued, resolutely single librarian and music teacher Marian (Foster) spurns Hill’s advances and sees through his ruse. It follows the exploits of “Professor” Harold Hill (Jackman), a con man posing as a traveling salesman, who drops into town to sell the locals on the idea of a boys’ marching band-along with the necessary uniforms and instruments-by exploiting their optimism, vanity, ignorance, and fear (in this case of the corrupting influence of pool playing). Set in 1912, with book, music, and lyrics by Willson, it was the author’s valentine to his home town of Mason City, Iowa (renamed River City in the show), and to the all-American music that he played as a young flutist in John Philip Sousa’s marching band. It’s also a role that Jackman has wanted to play for years, and he describes the exhilaration of performing again for a live audience as “like being shot out of a cannon.”Īn immediate smash when it opened on Broadway in 1957, The Music Man was a deliberate throwback to a vanished era. And this gleamingly produced, unapologetically old-fashioned, feel-good musical comedy is just the ticket. But as he confessed to the audience during his 2011 one-man show Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway, “I kind of like being onstage singing and dancing a little bit more.” Now, Jackman is once again back on Broadway, starring in a bliss-inducing revival of The Music Man, Meredith Willson’s wry and tuneful fable about a traveling flimflam man who meets his Waterloo and the love of his life in small-town Iowa.Īs we slog through the winter of our discontent into year three of the pandemic, we need a little Hugh Jackman-not to mention his incandescent costar Sutton Foster-to banish our cares.
#THE MUDIC MAN MOVIE#
Most of the earth’s citizens know Hugh Jackman as a big-screen action hero and romantic leading man-a movie star like they used to make them.
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