Hugh Jackman plays Liza's gay husband on Broadway
Bhangra Muffin
August 23, 2003
The Wolverine pulls in his claws and dons the lurid shirts of an
Aussie icon, writes Philip McCarthy in New York.
In a rehearsal room high above New York's 42nd Street, Hugh Jackman
and a cast of svelte young things are shimmying their way through a
high-energy rendition of Peter Allen's I Go to Rio, complete with
dips, twirls and toothy grins.
It's enough to make Wolverine, his irritable movie alter ego from
X-men, draw his claws in horror. But that's how it is for America's
favourite Australian right now.
Comics, mutants and Hollywood one day; castanets, maracas and Broadway
the next. (And perhaps babes and guns after that - this week Jackman
was voted on a James Bond fan site as the favourite to replace Pierce
Brosnan in the role).
"Actually I've done another film, Van Helsing, in between X-Men and
starting on this," Jackman said. "That guy is pretty surly as well. So
it's great to just melt into Peter Allen's effervescence. He had all
this positive energy. And it's a relief to do a project in America
where I don't have to put on an accent."
The project, of course, is the American version of the 1998 Australian
stage hit, The Boy From Oz, which begins previews in three weeks and
opens on October 16. The $US9 million production is the hot ticket of
the new Broadway season with advance sales of more than $US6 million.
Variety speculated that Jackman's name recognition "and perhaps a
hitherto long hibernating legion of Peter Allen enthusiasts" were
behind the early box office bounce.
Still, it's a big show with 26 parts and - playing in one of
Broadway's larger houses, the 1417-seat Imperial Theatre - it will
need to earn around $US500,000 a week just to pay for operating costs
before it begins recouping its investors' hefty outlay.
In the show, Jackman and company run through about 21 of Allen's songs
in the singer's inimitable, high-octane style that featured piano
playing-as-gymnastics and lurid Hawaiian shirts. The show's narrative,
heavily reworked from the original version by the American writer
Martin Sherman, traces Allen's life from Tenterfield, NSW, through
local success on television's Bandstand, to his American "discovery"
by Judy Garland, his marriage to Liza Minnelli and his eventual death
from AIDS complications in 1992.
Jackman says his own appreciation for Allen as a man - as distinct
from the better known caricature of a larger than life gay showman -
deepened as he slipped into his life and milieu.
The more successful you become, he says, the more pressure there is.
"I know from my own career that there are now more people watching
what I am doing and telling me what to do than ever before.
"Peter never at any time in his career, even at the pinnacle, played
it safe. He always took a risk. It's very inspiring, really. This is
going to sound very cliched, but Peter embodied a lot of what we hope
we are as Australians. I mean, Peter was prepared to have a go. To
really go with his instincts and be his own man."
It might be one reason why Jackman, 34, signed on to do Allen until at
least September next year. This is far longer than most Hollywood
stars are prepared to take out of their lucrative film careers.
Jackman recognises the risk. "I really wanted to do this but you've
got to make it a proposition that will appeal to investors as well.
There's something very exciting about making a Broadway debut in a
show not done here before. I like the fact that it's the first
Australian musical on Broadway. But there's also a risk."
And living in Manhattan for a year will enable his wife, the
actor-director Deborra-Lee Furness, to pursue some projects of her own
and allow their son, Oscar, 3, to go to a regular school.
At yesterday's rehearsal, Jackman - looking about 10 kilograms lighter
than at his Wolverine peak - pulled a flimsy shirt over his black
pants and green T-shirt to better evoke the song and dance man.
The producers, including the man behind the original Australian
version, Ben Gannon, opened the afternoon session to an Australian
media contingent, for whom Jackman added a verse or two of I Still
Call Australia Home.
"We've reworked the context and the placement a bit, but the song is
still in the show," Gannon said. "Now it's a kind of wistful moment
when Peter looks back through his life. But, you know, this idea that
in Australia it was the big show-stopping number I thought was a bit
off the mark.
For me, Tenterfield Saddler was the big number, and it still is in
this production. We've actually replaced a few songs we used in
Australia with other numbers that sort of bring out the emotions of
the moment better."
One feature is the beefed-up part of Liza Minnelli, who lives in New
York and, in an echo of the Allen relationship, recently split from
another husband.
Is she happy about seeing part of her life on her hometown stage?
"It's not really a story about Liza, which she knows, but about their
relationship which worked on some levels and didn't on others,"
Jackman said.
"But I know that she's coming. I've talked to her about it and she
pulled me aside straight after a concert one night and was very
serious. Basically she said that apart from all the glitz and glamour,
Peter was one of the strongest, most loyal men she had ever
encountered."