Hugh as a theatre aficionado

[jo]

Frank.Aviles ‏@faviles17 13m
13 minutes ago

Ty trying to hold in his smile as @realhughjackman sits in front of him. Lol way to leave us

[jo]

Hugh Jackman ‏@realhughjackman 13m
13 minutes ago

W my amazing theatre date Pat Schoenfeld. Battlefield at BAM a once in a lifetime experience. As good the Q&A w the incomparable Peter Brook

[jo]

His friendship with Pat Schoenfeld continues, even if her husband had passed on quite a number of years back.

May I repost this FOREWORD written by Hugh for the book re Jerry Schoenfeld --

ht.ly/eqEKq


The following is an excerpt from Mr. Broadway: The Inside Story of the Shuberts, the Shows, and the Stars by the late Gerald Schoenfeld. This is the foreword, written by Hugh Jackman.



Jackman and Schoenfeld, photo as printed in the book Mr. Broadway



When people meet me, usually their lasting impression is of my wife . . . after all, she is in my opinion far funnier, more interesting, and definitely sexier! The type of person who turns heads in whichever room she is in. . . .Well, I have to say my first memory of meeting Mr. Schoenfeld was a little similar. It was at a fancy London hotel off Hyde Park, I was with my good friends Ben Gannon and Robert Fox, the producers of The Boy from Oz, and we were going to tell him of our plan to bring the show to Broadway. It was around six p.m., and Mr. Schoenfeld had plans to go to the theater, so we were going to shake hands before they went to the show.

I was surprised when we went into the hotel that we went straight up to the room. I thought we might have met in the lobby, but no . . . Jerry was always authentic and down-to-earth, and—as I would say to him later during our decade of friendship—he was to me an honorary Australian . . . a man of old-fashioned values, where a handshake was stronger than any contract.

Jerry welcomed us not as the titan of Broadway, as he had been described to me, but in a very warm, genial, and up-front way. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Schoenfeld.” “Please call me Jerry. . . .Very nice to meet you, You”—Jerry always pronounced my name without the H… like a lot of genuine New Yorkers!—then straightaway said, “So . . . I know you are in movies, so are you really coming to Broadway with this show or what?”

Jerry always was to the point, and for the next ten years would say to me something similar: “Enough of all this movie shit, when are you coming home—when are you coming back to Broadway?” I told him yes, we shook hands . . . apparently that was it, it was done, then barely two minutes into our meeting, Pat came into the room wearing her bathrobe: “Jerry, have you seen my. . .”And I can’t remember the rest of the conversation. I immediately remembered I was in someone’s hotel room, and Pat didn’t blink an eyelid.We shook hands, I apologized for being there, and she told us to sit and relax, and I wondered how often things like this might have happened. For Pat it all seemed very normal. And like my wife, as big a personality as Jerry was, Pat somehow had that ability to turn heads effortlessly.

From that moment I knew we were going to be friends. I liked them both instantly, and very soon after, like would turn to love. Pat and Jerry invited me and my family to spend weekends with them upstate, we would go to the theater together, to restaurants, and all along I had that feeling that Jerry was not like a king but more like a father and brother all rolled into one.

The year I spent on Broadway doing The Boy from Oz was one of the greatest years of my life, with so many extraordinary memories. But one of my lasting impressions is the visits I would get from Jerry. Sometimes it would be just before I went onstage: “You,” Jerry in a very loud stage whisper would say, “I need to talk to you about something.” “Jerry, I am just about to go onstage.” “I know—it won’t take a second”. . . always made me laugh. But then, during the last song of the show, “Once Before I Go”, two to three times a week I would look out to the wings and there Jerry would be, a lover of the theater and one of the greatest supporters I have ever had. He told me how much he loved the show. . .maybe it was the resonance of the show’s themes of someone living their dreams, someone living life to the full, of having no regrets of the road traveled. And to me that was Jerry. Right up to his death Jerry was working . . .well, not that it was work to him. The theater was his domain, his church, his home. Talking to me about shows, sending me possible scripts for new shows, revivals . . . whatever.

The last night of Jerry’s life, Pat and he came to the premiere of my movie Australia. He came and grabbed me after the movie was over, upset that Pat thought it not a good idea to go to the after party, and said, “Very good, You . . . now enough of this movie business, when are you coming back home . . . to Broadway?” It would be only nine months later, in a show called A Steady Rain, with Daniel Craig . . . a fourteen-week run, and in which theater? The Schoenfeld, of course!

I can’t wait to read this book. I knew Jerry for only ten years. He changed my life in so many ways; now it is really time for me to learn about the other seventy years. Thank you, Pat, for making this book happen . . . and secretly I will always picture you working on it … in your bathrobe!

Thanks for sharing the memories, "You"


Jo

[mamaleh]

I remember that warm, personal foreword to a very readable memoir. I attended that premiere at the Ziegfeld and it was indeed a memorable evening. Not only did I have the opportunity to briefly chat with HJ and his dad afterwards but I wished the Schoenfelds a good evening as we made our way down the stairs. (Mr. S and I had enjoyed a fun conversation a few months earlier at Stars in the Alley.) Unfortunately, he passed away a few hours after leaving the Ziegfeld. A great loss to the theater community. I'm so glad he and HJ enjoyed such a close friendship and that his connection to the family continues with Mrs. S.

Ellen

[jo]

http://instagram.com/p/BMKn8P9DMls

If you look closely at the cast listing --

Wasn't Danny Mastrogiorgio the actor who was Hugh's understudy for A STEADY RAIN ?


Jo

[mamaleh]

Yes, he was. He also had a role in the recent ROCKY musical. In our chats at stage doors, Danny and I had a running gag going. During the run of A STEADY RAIN, I would often see him milling around the theater, and asked him whether he ever expected to go on. "Are you kidding?", he asked jokingly. He very well knew Hugh's reputation for just about never missing a performance. So I got to calling him, in a genial way, the Maytag repairman (from the commercial that implies he never has the opportunity to do any repairs). Now every time I see him in the theater district, we jokingly use that nickname. He's really a very good actor and has been in numerous plays, including LUCKY GUY and the most recent revival of GOLDEN BOY.

Ellen

[jo]

I am sure he is pretty good -- to have landed the role of understudy to Hugh Jackman in that two-hander of a play!


And it looks like a fan had a chance to meet Hugh at the theatre --

In reply to Hugh Jackman
save the reef ‏@6applz 2h
2 hours ago

Troy's fave superhero has not come off his high after meeting @realhughjackman last night. Classy, generous and kind. His mom thanks you!

[mamaleh]

Missed him by one performance (well, I was at a wedding last night). Caught THE FRONT PAGE Sunday afternoon. Very entertaining. Comments on Theater Opinions thread.

Ellen

[jo]

http://instagram.com/p/BOfx81yDEA1

[hughmanity]

Darn it, Hugh...I'll be there next week....couldn't you have waited??  Oh well, glad he liked it!

Dec 26, 2016 19:10:31 GMT -5 jo said:

http://instagr.am/p/BOfx81yDEA1

[jo]

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4067352/Hugh-Jackman-snapped-backstage-Broadway-musical-cast-returning-stateside-spend-Christmas-NYC.html














DEAR EVAN HANSEN and THE GREATEST SHOWMAN share the same composing team of PASEK and PAUL!

[mamaleh]

Surprised he didn't see it during its acclaimed run earlier this year at Second Stage. Could be Pasek & Paul's new influence....

It's a thoughtful musical with some serious underlying themes. Star Ben Platt's best number, which I think will probably be performed at the Tonys next year, is "Waving Through a Window."

Ellen

[jo]

He was busy with pre-production and actual filming of LOGAN ( in New Orleans and New Mexico)...which he followed with a break in his homeland.


Jo

[jo]

Solo snapshot at EvanHansen backstage --





He lights up the world when he smiles!


Jo

[mamaleh]

Move over, Mary Tyler Moore.

Ellen

[jo]

Not sure if he went to the show's opening ( they were supposed to be filming a big production number on Monday for SHOWMAN), but he sent Cate Blanchett unusual Break-a-leg wishes


pagesix.com/2017/01/09/stars-choose-cate-blanchett-over-the-golden-globes/

Sunday night. Frigid. Snowy. Golden Globes. The Barrymore Theatre jammed. Marvelous, gorgeous talented two-time Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett opening in “The Present” by Chekhov, who in the 1800s didn’t have Russians rushing home for Netflix and streaming so his Act 1’s an hour and 40.

Alan Cumming, why the theater instead of watching TV? “Because I want to see real talent.”
Designer Prabal Gurung, why watching Cate Blanchett instead of Jimmy Fallon? “Because I love Cate. Also, she wears my clothes.”

Terry Allen Kramer with George Hamilton, why you here? “Because I’m one of the producers.”

Fellow Australian Hugh Jackman sent Cate a crate of giant balloons. She had to pierce some to squeeze into her dressing room.

Outside, chatting up TV cameramen as Tina Fey slipped inside, John Crowley. Somebody whispered: “That’s the director. He’s really cool.” Yeah. Right. Temperature was single digits. He was wearing just his suit. No coat. Shivering. Rubbing his hands together. Oy, was he cool.

Cate is magnificent. Chekhov is Chekhov. The evening is special. However, this three-hour play could strain the urinary tract.

[jo]

The twitter account is a fan account, not JG's real twitter account.

Hugh was probably seen seeing the show.

[mamaleh]

I figured it wasn't JG's account. Hugh would have stopped backstage after the show and told JG how much he enjoyed it, etc.

I wonder if SHOWMAN has completed filming.

Ellen

[hughmanity]

[jo]

"Keller Dover and Detective Loki"

I wonder if Hugh and Jake and Denis Villeneuve will ever reunite in another dramatic movie


Jo

[jo]

He confirms it himself --

I wonder if he is aching to come back to Broadway himself -- must be a little jealous of Loki treading the boards live...while he is dancing on a film set in downtown Manhattan

[jo]

Apr 5, 2017 22:38:53 GMT -5 jo said:

He confirms it himself --

I wonder if he is aching to come back to Broadway himself -- must be a little jealous of Loki treading the boards live...while he is dancing on a film set in downtown Manhattan

[mamaleh]

I see Ms. Ashford knows where to put her hand.

Ellen

[jo]

[jo]

What inspired Sondheim --


www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/27992

Georges Seurat
French, 1859-1891
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884, 1884/86
Oil on canvas
81 3/4 x 121 1/4 in. (207.5 x 308.1 cm)
Inscribed at lower right: Seurat

Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, 1926.224
de Hauke 162
European Painting and Sculpture
Gallery 240

In his best-known and largest painting, Georges Seurat depicted people relaxing in a suburban park on an island in the Seine River called La Grande Jatte. The artist worked on the painting in several campaigns, beginning in 1884 with a layer of small horizontal brushstrokes of complementary colors. He later added small dots, also in complementary colors, that appear as solid and luminous forms when seen from a distance.

Seurat's use of this highly systematic and "scientific" technique, subsequently called Pointillism, distinguished his art from the more intuitive approach to painting used by the Impressionists. Although Seurat embraced the subject matter of modern life preferred by artists such as Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he went beyond their concern for capturing the accidental and instantaneous qualities of light in nature. Seurat sought to evoke permanence by recalling the art of the past, especially Egyptian and Greek sculpture and even Italian Renaissance frescoes. As he explained to the French poet Gustave Kahn, "The Panathenaeans of Phidias formed a procession. I want to make modern people, in their essential traits, move about as they do on those friezes, and place them on canvases organized by harmonies of color." Some contemporary critics, however, found his figures to be less a nod to earlier art history than a commentary on the posturing and artificiality of modern Parisian society.

Seurat made the final changes to La Grande Jatte in 1889. He restretched the canvas in order to add a painted border of red, orange, and blue dots that provides a visual transition between the interior of the painting and his specially designed white frame.