The boy from oz

[foxie]

Nothing as wonderful as laying on beach listening to the cast album?☀️❤️

[jo]

Do you have any favorites in the cast album ?

Mine is ALL THE LIVES ( OF ME) -- it is such a great ballad and Hugh does it full justice.

Much like TENTERFIELD SADDLER, which was dropped from the Broadway production but was included in the cast recording...and has become a staple in his one-man show series. It provides the needed quiet moment before many finales.


Jo

[njr]

Definitely Once Before I Go.

Nancy

[jo]

Too bad we never got a press reel for it, was added after the musical numbers were changed or rearranged to open the show with ALL THE LIVES ( OF ME) --

[mamaleh]

Thanks, Jo. Great slide show, too. He was absolute perfection that unforgettable year, wasn't he? I don't think I'll ever be as transfixed on a show or performer again; that was probably a once-in-a-lifetime magical confluence of both.

Ellen

[jo]

That was a very magical time, Ellen!

That whole year was one great time for loving the show and its star. Too bad we lost the archives of various daily show reports.

On a personal note - I wish I could have seen the show more times. Given where I live halfway across the world, the three trips to NYC which allowed me to see it 13 times on Broadway were not too bad ( although I did catch up with it again in Sydney 2 years later) ...but I was lucky to have had a great seat at the closing show

At the closing show, the atmosphere was so laden with love and affection between the audience and the star and vice versa - that it seemed more like a fairy tale. The moments before the curtain went up ( not literally), the buzz inside the Imperial was like a fiesta -- people almost congratulating themselves for simply being there. We were all ogling celebrities who joined the closing show audience. Matt Damon, Barbara Walters, Barbara Cook, Joel Grey, Nancy Sinatra, Patrick Whitesell - we were all chattering like mad hoping that the day would last forever once Hugh bounded on stage!

I have to laugh when I remembered how helpless the theatre management was from preventing people taking photos of the show while it was ongoing. They simply said : "Please don't use flash!". Unbelievable time!


Thanks, Hugh, for giving us that wonderful, amazing, unbelievable magical time on Broadway smiley-love067



Jo

[njr]

I agree! I will never forget it--my first time in NYC, first Broadway show, 2nd row front & center on March 17, 2004!! Plus to be able to meet him at the stage door and get a photo with him! What an experience.
It was 29 degrees out, but I didn't care! Here I am with the green lei on (remember, it was St. Patrick's Day):



Nancy

[mamaleh]

A short clip of HJ's singing "When I Get My Name in Lights" was featured on this week's "Theater Talk." Guest Harvey Fierstein, essentially promoting the upcoming HAIRSPRAY LIVE, offered many anecdotes about his past shows, one of which was LEGS DIAMOND, for which he wrote the book. He was talking about the original premise for the show and how it was radically changed to provide entrance applause for Peter Allen. Hence, the splashy lighting and thunderous music for the opening number, "When I Get My Name in Lights." That change usually didn't produce the desired result, unfortunately. The "Theater Talk" episode is not yet available online but soon should be.

Ellen

[jo]

When I get my name in lights --

that is what Hugh is doing now as THE GREATEST SHOWMAN


Thanks for that insight, Ellen.


Jo

[jo]

I remember this interview but I could no longer find the original online article from The New York Times. I found this reprint in a message forum. I do have the hard copy but cannot upload it.  A very telling insight on why he finds performing in a stage musical  very exhausting!

NY Times Interview:Exhausted but Proud, Hugh Jackman Retires His Sequins

By JESSE GREEN Published: September 5, 2004

Hugh Jackman before a recent performance of "The Boy From Oz," onstage at the Imperial Theater: "I don't think I've ever worked this hard, and probably never will again."

WITH its pharmacopeia of teas, powders, pills and soothing cinnamon candles, Hugh Jackman's dressing room at the Imperial Theater is little more than a pit stop for his eight-times-a-week endurance marathon. Singing in 20 of the 27 numbers in "The Boy From Oz," he is onstage for all but three or four minutes. Critics reviewing the opening last October were glad of his omnipresence, applauding his Broadway debut as the flamboyant performer and songwriter Peter Allen, while panning almost everything else about the show, especially its schematic and sometimes cringe-inducing book. But Mr. Jackman's charm made the production (which improved with time) a hit anyway; when it closes next Sunday, after 32 previews and 365 regular performances, it will have recouped its initial investment of $8.25 million on gross ticket sales of more than $42 million. Astonishingly, when Mr. Jackman sat down for a conversation a few weeks before closing, he had not missed even one of those performances, a feat that gave him, he said, a masochistic thrill but had also taken its toll. Two hours before a Friday night curtain, when he should have been eating his dinner, he talked about what the experience had meant, and done, to him.

JESSE GREEN How tired are you?
HUGH JACKMAN At the end of an individual show I often feel fine. Cumulatively, though, I'm exhausted. I am really, really tired. I've never been this kind of tired, to be honest with you. And I don't think I've ever worked this hard, and probably never will again.

Q. Do you wish you hadn't agreed to do it for so long?
A. No, I don't. But if I had to do it again, I would probably say, "I think I can only do seven a week." Give them 100 percent, and actually have a life outside of it.

Q. The show couldn't have recouped without that eighth performance.
A. I'm actually a proponent of eight a week, just not for this particular show. I mean, Trevor Nunn came to see it, and he says: "Hughie, this is `Lear.' You can't do this eight times a week." Well, it can be done; obviously I'm doing it. And I don't think I will look back in 10 years and think of the exhaustion. So I don't want to overplay it, but I think it's just a bit too much.

Q. How close have you gotten to missing a show?
A. Once I had a cold and was so incredibly dry I almost couldn't make a sound. It was to the point that I had the stage littered with glasses of water. Sometimes in the middle of a song I would have to drink. Sometimes I'd think, at the interval: "I can't go back out. I'm not going to make noise." Four or five times I've been to the doctor with a slight illness, and say two of those times, I've thought, "Well, I'm going to be taking a day off." But she gives me a shot of this or that, or an antibiotic, and I feel better in a matter of hours.

Q. What other kinds of maintenance have you had to do to get through it?
A. I have massages twice a week, after the matinees, which sounds great but they're like hell. This guy, Greg, sometimes I almost want to deck him, because it feels like he's just taking out all his childhood angst on me on the table. And I'm not from a dance background so my body was kind of like, "Wow, hang on a sec." So I see a woman who does body alignment once a week. She just . . . fixes me. And I do yoga once or twice a week, train in the gym once or twice a week, tai chi once a week. So generally something once a day, except the Monday, nothing. I don't know how much detail you want.

Q. All of it, details.
A. So before I go to bed, I steam for 10 minutes, a little personal inhaler. When I wake up in the morning I steam again. Let's see, I take vitamin B-12 shots a couple of times a week; I just do them here myself. Lots of vitamin C. And probably the greatest source of rejuvenation is that I meditate twice a day. And then, normal warm-ups. I do a singing lesson every day before the show for 15 minutes with our musical director, Patrick Vaccariello, and we go through any problems I'm having.

Q. Problems? Even at this point?
A. Absolutely. You know what's really weird? I actually got stage fright for the first time in my life six months into the run.

Q. Where from?
A. One night, during the song "Quiet, Please, There's a Lady on Stage," I cracked a little bit on a note. I forgot about it, but the next night when I came up to that note, about a line before, I sort of remembered, and then I really cracked on that note. I woke up the next morning and it was the first thought in my head. So I thought, "This is ridiculous," and forgot about it. That night, I was nervous all the way through Act I and then cracked badly. It was this feeling of humiliation onstage, where literally I would turn red and then get angry, and then I'd feel it underneath while playing the whole show. It started to envelop me, to the point where I'd wake up and I'd be nervous coming to the show. I've never had stage fright, I've never really understood it, but all day it felt like a Herculean effort to get out on the stage. I started thinking, "I don't know how to sing." And whatever used to happen naturally I was second-guessing. I wanted to vomit, all from a little note!

Q. Did you ever figure out what it was about?
A. No. But one day about a week later, thank God, this thought came into my head saying: "Even if you don't sing a note, just speak the words. This song has nothing to do with you. It's about Judy Garland." And I sang that night and I was just fine, and I literally felt like a demon was leaving my body. I looked down at Patrick and he was just smiling, and I wanted to cry.

Q. How has the show changed from a year ago?
A. About three weeks into rehearsal I began to feel we really had to break the thing open, that I had to do some kind of ad-lib audience-participation. So I just sketched out a thing, and I did it at rehearsals, and if you can imagine in the rehearsal room, with no audience, it's not really funny. So we dropped it, but then it kind of recurred organically one night, after we opened, when someone came in late, with the usher shining the torch, and sat down right in front of me in the front row. I just sort of stopped short and started having a conversation. Now, when the latecomers don't come, I really regret it because the whole of Act I is very different. Of course, I have to be careful who I pick because some people come late deliberately to do routines; I can tell. I never pick a latecomer who is in the front row.

Q. The ad-lib section at the beginning of Act II, when you often invite someone to come onstage and banter or dance, has become one of the highlights of the show. People come back for it.
A. It started around November, and I was nervous that I would trip myself up, that I wouldn't be funny. But now I've realized that people laugh just because they sense that you're winging it. And, really, they do all the work. I get someone up to dance and people just go mental because they're all thinking, "That could be me."


Q. Has it ever gotten out of hand?
A. One woman took her top off. She was in the front row, and I was just speechless. Another time, someone yelled out, "I want to bite your butt." And I said, "Well, come on, lady, come on down," thinking she wouldn't. But down she came, and I stuck out my bum, and she just chomped in.

Q. Well, that's certainly in the Peter Allen spirit. Did you at some point ask yourself whether you really wanted to take on what must be the most flamboyant role in the world?
A. Do you mean about his being gay? Because that never bothered me.

Q. Not the gayness per se. I mean the hugeness, the abandon, the big campy silliness of the character.
A. Yeah, that was nerve-racking, and yet also what I needed as an actor. At drama school you have that abandon. You try anything. And I was witnessing in myself, and also I watched in other people's careers, that the abandon seems to get less and less. And some people say, "Well, I just know what I do best now, and this is what the market wants, so I'll do X-Man movies." So it scared me but I said yes right away.

Q. Not to make this a "Tootsie" moment, but are you saying you're a better actor for having worn Peter Allen's drag?
A. It's made me trust my instincts more, and want to risk more, too. Now I want to do a one-man show as Hugh Jackman. I never had the guts to admit that before. I want to do some stage work every year. And in the next movie I'm doing, "The Fountain," Darren Aronofsky is asking me to do things I've never done, and I can't wait. After doing "The Boy From Oz," I thought, "I want to have this feeling on film — this feeling of `This is going to take everything I've got.' "

Q. If you got that feeling from "Oz," I wonder how much of it was the material, which as you must know was not critically admired, and how much was what you accessed through the material?
A. I don't think I'm so talented that I transcend the material. Particularly in a musical where a lot of time is spent singing. If the music's not good it doesn't really matter who's out there singing it.

Q. But you know there was a lot of criticism about the show itself, in essence saying that you were giving one of the great performances of the season in one of the worst shows of the season.
A. It doesn't make sense to me. If I'm speaking what must be 50 percent of the book, how could you literally trash the book and give me praise? I've been in dogs before, and I never felt that here. And that's why I was shocked by the venom against the show. I was like, "Wow, this just doesn't compute with my experience," which was sort of disorienting to me. I thought I had jet lag or something.


Q. How hard is it to be the one guy getting all the praise while everyone else is getting slammed?
A. Because I was committing a year and a half of my life to the show, I didn't feel like I was separate from it. I wanted the show to get that praise. I was very disappointed. Not just for them, for myself.

Q. But did you agree with any of it?
A. Parts seemed arduous and felt clumsy, but we worked on it, and I think it doesn't feel that way so much now. I really felt this show could affect people, show them a really great time and mean something. I don't mean like Chekhov or Shakespeare, but that we could make a connection. For me and many in the audience, it has proven to do that; almost universally for the critics, not at all. It's sort of like having one of those "Santa Claus isn't real" moments as an adult. But no matter what criticism you have of the show, I think there's a spirit intrinsic in the material that elevates it beyond that. It's not me, it's the show.

Q. I don't know . . . you're leaving and it's closing. Did you want someone to take over for you?
A. Absolutely. It's a great role, and all we needed, the producer said, is someone to do it for 12 weeks, to show that other people could do it, and do it their own way.

Q. Who would you have wanted?
A. Ewan McGregor. He's probably top of my list. And also Robbie Williams would have been brilliant.

Q. So why aren't they in the wings?
A. I think that they were asked and just turned it down.

Q. Ricky Martin: true or false?
A. I think they asked him. They asked Harry Connick Jr.; that would have worked, too.

Q. Who or what wouldn't have worked?
A. Someone who can't connect with the audience.

Q. You mean from the stage. What about the connection at the stage door after the show?
A. Yeah, that could sometimes be a bit much. But John Travolta told me to look every one of them in the eye. Sometimes that's all it takes.

Not mentioned here was that the late producer TBFO Ben Gannon also talked to Russell Crowe as a possible replacement. There was an article on Mr. Gannon towards the end of the run when he mentioned that.

[mamaleh]

I remember that interview. BTW, Jesse Green is a frequent guest on "Theater Talk."

Ellen