Hugh Jackman: From New York, With Love review – the showman hits Broadway again
When Hugh Jackman returned to his signature role of the superhero Wolverine last year, it was half a flex and half a retreat. On one hand, Deadpool & Wolverine has since become Jackman's biggest movie ever, with well over $1bn in global grosses, with audiences obviously relishing the revival of the character as much as Deadpool himself did. On the other, Jackman played this part for 17 years before hanging up his claws with the elegiac Logan; going back after that feels like an admission, on some level, that his movie-star career can't function the same way without it. In turn, this makes Jackman's stint of 2025 live shows – two dozen of them through October at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall, as well as a summer headlining gig at BST Hyde Park in London – part victory lap through the song-and-dance material he clearly loves, and part reassertion of his stand-alone star quality.
As the latter, it's admittedly convincing – could many major other movie stars sell out multiple nights at Radio City doing a bunch of Broadway and Broadway-adjacent songs? Though Hugh Jackman: From New York, With Love isn't a literal one-man operation – it employs a small group of back-up singers and dancers and even, on the Saturday evening show, a solo performed by the stage veteran Lauren Blackman – it rests entirely on Jackman's shoulders. He clearly takes the responsibility seriously while attempting to wear it lightly; early in Saturday night's show, he quickly outlined the shape of the approximately 110-minute program ('no encore, no interval') and playfully showed off a handy guide to the locations of the Radio City bathrooms, encouraging people to step out as needed, rather than waiting for the right strategic moment. In other words, the atmosphere was more pop-crooner concert than Broadway revue. The setlist will seemingly change, at least slightly, from show to show, drawing from a pool of musicals that includes The Music Man, Oklahoma!, Les Miserables, The Boy from Oz, and the film sensation The Greatest Showman.
The last musical provided a lot of material for Saturday's show; the majority of the soundtrack was played in full, to the delight of the crowd, though Jackman humbly passed on the opportunity to open the set with The Greatest Show (it was played second). A number of Peter Allen songs from The Boy from Oz, meanwhile, were placed together in a medley, providing a bridge to less bombast-friendly numbers. Indeed, it was oddly endearing to watch Jackman try to find ways to pay in-show tribute to projects from outside the musical genre; hence an abbreviated dance routine set to Bye Bye Bye as a kind of sidelong (and, frankly, unnecessary) nod to Deadpool & Wolverine, and, most unexpectedly, a cover of an Alexi Murdoch song featured in the opening of his robot-boxing picture Real Steel. He even offered a preview of sorts for his next film, Song Sung Blue, where he plays part of a Neil Diamond tribute band, by warbling Sweet Caroline in full wedding-reception cheesiness, crowd-supplied 'ba ba ba' and all.
In moments like these, Jackman rides a line between charm and smarm, and not every performance on Saturday was equally showstopping. He rattled off Ya Got Trouble from The Music Man with impressive precision, but sounded a little wobbly on You Will Be Found, a number from Dear Evan Hansen – not a Jackman show, mind, but one with songs by Greatest Showman songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. The backstory around some of his choices was often as entertaining as the songs themselves, as when he preceded Stars from Les Miserables with an account of using it to audition for Beauty and the Beast on Broadway and biffing the final soaring note. He also got genuinely, touchingly choked up remembering his late father.
Fans, then, will likely come away from the show satisfied with Jackman's razzle-dazzle energy and relentless positivity. But as impressive a feat as this is, it still feels like an incomplete picture of the man's talent. Just as any additional Wolverine movies will likely hit the same notes as the earlier ones, a show like From New York, With Love is more feature-length encore than innovation, and one that must naturally subtract some of the versatility that makes Jackman such a dynamic performer. Some of his best work, in movies like Bad Education and The Prestige, has nothing to do with comic-book spectacle or soaring melodies. Few actors could sustain a hybrid residency and concert tour – but if more of them could, we'd probably get fewer great movies and shows from them. Still, we should let Jackman and his most devoted fans have this moment of triumph. It may be a placeholder, but it's also a reminder that Jackman's dazzling talent is far from spent.
Hugh Jackman will perform on Broadway on dates until October and headlines BST Hyde Park on 6 July
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We'll be rolling out those interviews every day this week; the full collection to date is here. How did you get involved in Smash? The writers contacted me, so it was simple; I just answered a phone call and said, 'Yeah, of course!' I had worked with Bob Martin before, and I had known Rick Elice for years, and I love both of them, so it was an easy yes. This was right when the pandemic was opening up a little bit, and they had written this musical version of Smash. There was no director yet—it was just to see what they had, basically, for the producers and people like that. It was maybe two days: We got together one day and then read it for them the next day. Basically, they handed it to me—which was foolish, I thought, but even more foolish was that they stayed with me over the years as we developed the project to where it is now. You match the role so perfectly, though. It feels like it was written for you. I think maybe it became that way. 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If they're really trying to honor what the writer's initial intentions were, and sticking to what they wrote as the Bible—and that's not necessarily a bad thing—it would be less so, other than just putting their words through your own filter. To some degree it's always going to be you as well. But with most of the things I've worked on, and certainly new work, it has been a relatively, if not wildly, collaborative effort. It has to be: It's such a collaborative medium. There are so many things that have to come together and hopefully it's on the same page. And you have a certain persona as an actor—in the roles you tend to play and the way that you tend to play them. When you have a strong personal style, maybe that has the potential to make a stronger stylistic impression on the piece. Yeah, but especially on Broadway, because there's so much money at stake, a lot of that depends on what you're allowed to do or what you're asked to do. Not that I'm like, 'Oh, I have a lot of range'—Who cares? Everyone does. But if I'm not doing a Broadway show, which I'm often not, I go work somewhere else, and if you look at the stuff I've done regionally, it's a much more rangy situation. I'm not always asked to be the silly and perhaps effeminate comic. But that's what I'm asked to do on Broadway, and why would anyone say no to doing a Broadway show? I've been very pleased and very fortunate to be able to do it. And to do it a lot! You did two musicals this year on Broadway, which is very rare. Insane. It never works out that way, but this time it did. It was just timing. It was great. Because after The Prom was the pandemic, and I wasn't lucky enough to be on Broadway for quite a while. Which is five years ago, almost six now. Which is crazy. In fairness, though, for a lot of that time Broadway wasn't happening at all. Right, exactly. It couldn't go on without me. [ Laughs.] The musical version of Smash is so different from the TV show—it's much closer to 42nd Street now, with Nigel as a gay Julian Marsh. Your character in The Prom, Barry, was another theater queen of a roughly similar type. To you, what distinguishes them from each other? That certainly crossed my mind even when we were first reading Smash —and one of the writers also wrote The Prom, so of course the similarities are there. But there's something about Nigel in Smash that's much darker than Barry was. Barry was just a big-hearted, loving guy who happened to be gay and funny, hopefully, but Nigel is a much more troubled character, and he is certainly troubled by what happens to him and his production throughout the piece. That's what I tried to glom onto: the put-upon-ness of the character in the situations he has found himself in, and how he goes about using the tools he has, which are usually his sense of humor. He also seems so much more competent than Barry. I think so, definitely. Dee Dee, Beth Leavel's character in The Prom, was a two-time Tony winner, and she carried Barry with her. And he had a Drama Desk that was kind of half broken. Even though he was a successful actor, he was not as successful. Whereas Nigel is Casey Nicholaw or Susan Stroman—he's someone who has worked a lot as a big-time director of Broadway musicals. And in The Prom, Barry creates his own mess, but Nigel is the only one working on Bombshell who has a real possibility of fixing it in some way. Exactly. And it turns out that he's right. He's saying, Let's make this bright and celebratory. We can't go too deep with this show. We can't go down the road of having her die at the end and all that dark stuff. Ironically, that's part of the challenge of making Smash into a musical at all, out of the existing material. The songs are great, but they're also partly tongue-in-cheek so it's hard to imagine the musical-within-a-musical that they come together to create. It's a delicate road. Like, are we to believe that this actress can do 18 numbers? But tone-wise, I think the way in which the songs are presented—only in rehearsal or in a performance situation, until the very end—keeps the show about the process. It's not really about Bombshell. It's about these people trying to put on a show. It's 42nd Street. It's The Bandwagon. One thing that's striking for me about your roles in both The Prom and Smash is that characters like them have been around for generations, but previously as decidedly supporting characters—the nellie, the nance. But in these two shows, they're the central characters. Yes! Very much so, and I think that's a good thing. I would even go further to say that—mostly because I'm the one who's played them—they're also not the leading man–looking type of person, either. I'm of a certain age, I have a certain type of physique. This is what I look like. And isn't that wonderful? [ Laughs.] But I think that's also something great about that. Some of the response I've gotten, during The Prom and even now this, from people my age or older who see a sort of representation—I never saw that coming. These older gay guys who are like, 'Oh my God, when I was growing up, if I had a Barry or a Nigel, to see that kind of representation and that kind of humor.' And I think that's a good thing. I do. Oh, I do too. These conversations so often get reduced to the question of whether characters are good role models or something, whether they're inspirational. And I think that's the wrong way to look at it. It's just that they're there, and they're human beings. The fact that they are not perfect is better. I agree, that's what representation is. And you see it reduced. There is not a conversation that does not get reduced now—everything is reduced to something without degrees, unfortunately I think. That's why I bring up how I look or how old I am as a leading character in a show. It's lovely in that it opens up degrees for viewing, conversation, response, whatever. Just the fact of it is significant. I think that's what I mean, too. The fact of it is good. Whether you hate it or love it, who cares? It's there. It's about the fact of it. You're giving one of my favorite performances of the year in this show. I'm also talking this week to Justina Machado, who's fantastic in Real Women Have Curves— And she's fabulous, too. Her fabulousness comes through. I love when that happens—it just all works. I'm bracketing these two performances together because they're a kind of masterful musical-comedy performance where everything is funny and the audience is so with you that you can take your time or go faster or whatever you want because you have full control of the room. Which is great. It's so important with comedy, because if you don't have control—if you're not conducting the orchestra of the audience—it's not going to work. They don't get to do it. And if they do, it's trouble. Again, I have to go to the writing: When you have a piece that's written in a way that makes you capable of orchestrating the room, it's a gift. It makes it more fun, and easier—even when it's hard, it's easier. It's a real gift, this kind of role. It doesn't come around often. How much does the audience response vary from performance to performance? I've been onstage a fair amount and that's still so mysterious to me. Yeah. If we knew how to figure that out, we'd follow that formula and there would be nothing but hits going on. I talk about it all the time, too much probably—backstage, even during the show. The short answer is that it's wildly different every show. You do a Wednesday, for instance, when probably it's a little older out there and a little quieter. And it's not that they're not enjoying it—they just don't want to let you know that. But then on Wednesday night, you're giving the same basic performance and they won't stop screaming with laughter. So I have to believe it is the molecular structure of the room. It can't just be them, and it can't just be me. It is just what is going on. And so there's no way to pre-prepare in a way, other than knowing what you're doing. And it's a surprise every moment. And you can't get too nervous or too in your head about what the response is, especially in comedy. That's something I admire so much in people who can be funny on stage, which is something that I usually can't do. People ask all the time, 'How do you do it eight times a week? How do you do a long run? Don't you want to put a gun in your mouth?' And of course, the answer is yes, sometimes. But the truth of it is, that's what keeps it interesting, or even keeps you awake during it. I can do it hundreds of times, but every single time I'm trying to figure it out: Like, I know that this line over here has to get a laugh. So if they're not where they need to be to get to that place, we gotta get 'em there! And that's what makes it interesting and athletic in a way, and tiring and tiresome, but also inspiring and fun. It's everything. And you're doing it within a quite regimented structure of existing writing and blocking. So you have limited tools. If you're doing a standup comedy, you can feel things out or chop things up as needed when you feel the energy moving. Yeah, it's limiting. But it also makes it all that more important to be open to having to do it a different way every single time. Which is hard and scary and vulnerable and all that stuff, but you have to be open to that or it's not gonna work. I just did an interview with Jessica Hecht — That bitch! [ Laughs.] I love Jessica so much. I've worked with her a number of times and it just brightens up my life every time I see her. She's a wildly unique individual. A totally free person on stage and in life, but she's also very careful. I mean that in a good way, not in a yucky way. She's full of care in what she's saying and what she's doing. I love it. Same! But anyhow, we went through some of her past Broadway experiences as I'd be curious to do that with you too, if you don't mind. Your first show was almost 30 years ago in the Matthew Broderick revival of How to Succeed, right? Yes, I replaced as Bud Frump. I didn't do it originally. But I felt a connection to it even when I was auditioning—and the director, Des McAnuff, really got what I did and supported it, which was lovely. That's not always the case, especially then, because nobody knew who I was to any degree. So that was very comforting. And Wayne Cilento, the choreographer—you'd never know it now, but when I was young, I was a dancer. Mostly tap, but I did a lot of dancing. And I think Wayne was surprised that this funny guy who was doing this role could do this dancing. I know he really pushed for me to get that part. It was hard, because it was quick. I was young and was a big part—the bad guy of that show in a way—and I only had five or six days to learn it, so it was scary. I can't even remember my opening night of that show. There was one section where I was all alone on stage in the lights, and I had an out-of-body experience—I didn't know what I was doing. But I did it. It was very exciting, and it was certainly a huge moment for me. Was Matthew still in it at that point? He had gone off to make a movie—I think it was The Cable Guy— so he had a break, and John Stamos replaced him. There was a week between John Stamos and Matthew coming back, and that's when I went in, at the same time as the woman who was going to play Rosemary, the female lead, who was a girl named Sarah Jessica Parker. This was before they got married. And so we had a week with the understudy, the wonderful John Bolton, and we rehearsed with Matthew a couple times during that week. And then we all did it together for the last six or seven months of the show. I would love to have seen the two of you do The Producers. I feel like that would've been an interesting mix. Wow, yeah. I love working with Matthew. I would drop everything to work with him. We've done a couple shows along the way, and I just adore him. I adore both of them. You did do The Producers eventually, but as Carmen Ghia. I did, and by that time, Matthew was out. It was years after it opened. I went in with Jonathan Freeman as Roger, who I also did How to Succeed with. Those were the only two times I replaced. I don't know if I'm always the best at that—I might be a little too individual sometimes, and that can be tricky, honestly, for people who have an existing show like The Producers, which was a huge smash. That machine was going. It's like Hamilton today: If you go into Hamilton, it's like, 'That bullet goes there,' you know? You have to fit in. I'm not sure I'm the best at that, but I did the best I could. There's a patch there— The Producers, Gypsy, Little Me —where you track seems to be a certain kind of snotty or ineffectual assistant. The second banana. As we were talking about earlier with Smash, that sort of put-upon quality is something I trained well for. Especially in Little Me, where every character I played, Martin Short was just screaming at me—'Rararararararararar'—and I'd just be like, 'Yes, father' or whatever. But then you got to do Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me. Yes. When we did Little Me, we became friendly very quickly, so Marty's show came about because of our relationship, and because we knew we worked well together. Marty's been a formidable person in my life—mostly as a friend, but he's also a parental, mentor-y kind of guy. He's very smart and wildly funny, obviously, and so sweet on stage, so generous. That really proved true on Fame Becomes Me. It was his show, but he let the rest of us who were in it shine. He needed that. He was very bright about that. And that show was a great, fun thing to do. And then came Bullets Over Broadway, which ended up a little bit of— —a miss. Not for everyone. My colleague David Cote, for example, liked it very much at the time. But it was hard to compete with a movie that was so memorable and successful. I agree. It had a lot going against it that maybe I didn't realize as we were going along. And I think people had a problem with the fact that there wasn't an original score. But I loved being a part of it. I loved that group of people and it was a great part. During the workshop and rehearsals and previews, it was like, 'This is a hit!' And then we opened and—bomb. You could tell by the audience response the day after we opened. It's the only time I've experienced that. I don't think that it was a bomb, but it closed very quickly. Sadly. I loved doing it—it was a really fun show to do. But it just didn't connect. I have a complex relationship to this issue, needless to say, but I know that negative reviews can sometimes take the wind out of a show's sails. For the audience, at least, if not for the performers. I'm a little weird about reviews. I really am able to take them with a grain of salt. Obviously, on a personal level, it's nice when someone says nice things and it's not so lovely when they loathe you. But you can't give—no offense—you can't give it that much power. When you see a show, that's your day, your opinion, your unique evening. These things can't be taken as the gospel, end-all truth. No offense taken! I totally agree. So I don't have a problem with reading reviews. It also depends on one's investment in the piece. The Prom is a great example. We worked on that for almost a decade before it barely got to Broadway, so I was curious—just as someone who spent so much time on it—how it was received. And I was very pleased overall that people liked it and got the heart of it. But it's mostly about curiosity, from my point of view. I get that. I read what people say about me on the rare occasions that people say things about me, and I often find that frustrating, because it always seems to get something wrong. I don't just mean I disagree, I mean it's factually wrong. Absolutely. Even a good review, Adam, is sometimes…I mean, if I'm gonna be fully honest, which I am, even some of the nice things that were said about me in this performance I'm giving now are not the nice things I want them to say. You know, it's lovely and it's terrific, but it's also, like, ' That's what it is to them?' That kind of feeling. One show that I really liked that you were in, and that I wish had had a longer run, is Shuffle Along. Yeah, me too. Just the best. The subject matter of the piece, how it was presented—I just thought it was gold. And the process couldn't have been more lovely. Everyone was so wonderful and I'd been fans or friends with all of them for years; I'm such a fan of George [C. Wolfe]'s work, and to be able to work with him on that was a highlight of my life. Not to mention being the sole white person in that show: The experience of that, of being the minority for a change, was invaluable. So yes, I'm sorry that it didn't run longer as well—deeply sorry, because that's one I would like to still be doing. But it was great, honestly, that it happened at all and that I was allowed to be a part of it. I'll take those couple of months. Sometimes there are just those heartbreakers. One of my first great disappointments as a critic—a show I really loved that didn't get the response it deserved—was another George C. Wolfe show, Caroline, or Change. Which to this day is one of my very favorite musicals. Absolutely. Me, too. So great. On a list of the great shows of your life, as an audience member, that would be one of, like, five shows. But the thing about Shuffle Along is that that was a once-in-a-lifetime staging. I can't imagine it being done in high schools or regional theaters. It would be way too expensive. It was that group of people—it could only be those people, and mostly George. So it closed on Broadway and that's it. And the thing that hurts even more about Shuffle Along not having a longer life is that it was all about trying to say, 'These people should be remembered, but nobody knows this show because they were Black.' And what the show was saying came true again, in a way. But on the bright side: Thousands of people did get to see it who wouldn't have seen it otherwise. Yes. It happened. It happened, and that's incredible. In a way, that any show can happen on Broadway is incredible. It's a victory.
