MUSICAL THEATRE INTERVIEW:
Hugh Jackman a triple-threat performer
30 JUN/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

Some know him best as the taciturn but hunky Wolverine in the X-Men film franchise. Others know him more as a romantic leading man in movies such as Kate and Leopold (opposite Meg Ryan) and Australia (opposite Nicole Kidman). Still others know him as the Tony-winning stage star of such hits as The Boy from Oz, or the sophisticated and urbane host of awards shows such as the Oscars and the Tonys (for which he won an Emmy in the days before Neil Patrick Harris).

The latter just might be Hugh Jackman's most intense fans -- the ones who insist that the Australian-born performer is at his best when he's live on stage, demonstrating his incredible talents as a triple-threat performer -- singing, acting and dancing up a storm.

It's rare indeed for North Americans to be able to see the Wolverine deliver such captivating performances in person. But Toronto is the second city, after San Francisco, to host Hugh Jackman in Concert, which opens Tuesday in a limited run on the stage of the downtown Princess of Wales Theatre.

As the title implies, it will be all Jackman all the time. While it inarguably will be a treat but for most of us, it also must be a daunting affair for him -- onstage all alone (save for an 18-piece orchestra), with no one to whom he can throw the ball if he suddenly finds himself short of energy halfway through the voyage from curtain up -- all without even an intermission to call his own. But if Jackman is in any way unnerved at the prospect, he certainly hides it well as he sits down to talk about his upcoming show.

"I know what you mean," he says with an easy smile when it's pointed out that most people's idea of hell would be 90 minutes or so on stage all by themselves, in front of a few thousand people. "But I find it easier to be on stage than to be going on and off. I feel quite alive and comfortable on stage. Once I'm out there, it doesn't make sense to go off."

That would account, in no small part, for the apparent ease with which he has hosted various award shows -- "It's like a dinner party," he says with an expressive shrug -- but as for a one man show? Well, that's a different matter, he concedes. "It's a lot harder than I thought," he admits with quiet candor, recalling that in the beginning he hadn't even really planned to do a one-man show at all.

In fact, all he was really looking to do was to fill some time that had suddenly become available this year while waiting for the next installment of X-Men to come together. Rather than simply sit and cool his heels, he decided to do something with the time. He recalls asking his agent, "Can you find me a charity gig -- a 30-minute gig?" That would entail working up performances of only three or four songs. Instead, what his agent came up with was a two-week theatre gig in San Francisco and the challenge of putting together a one-man show that, all in all, was not only pretty well received in May, it proved to be a good time for Jackman too. "It was so much fun, just putting it together," he says enthusiastically. "Some things worked and some things didn't. It's been a terrific evolution. I'm thrilled I did it."

Of course, that two-week gig forms the basis of the show he's bringing to Toronto, minus the bugs he managed to work out during the San Fran run. "I'm starting work on a much stronger foundation," he says. But in the end, putting it all together was just the beginning. "That's not the exhilarating part," he insists. "The exhilarating part is when you're connecting. It's like you feel you know each other. They're the moments that are out-of-body. Time seems to slow down."

Considering his Broadway background, one simply assumes that Jackman' s ultimate goal is a stint on Broadway in his own one man show -- and one would be right. Sort of. "My ultimate goal is to be able to do this show for the next 30 or 40 years," he insists. "And if that includes New York, you bet!"

Over the past few years, things haven't been easy for the ex-pat Australian Hugh Jackman, who currently makes his home in the U.S. with Deborra-Lee Furness, his wife of 15 years, and the couple's two adopted children. What he has learned is that the full tragedy of things such as floods and fires aren't diminished simply because you're half a world away.

"It does pull on your heartstrings," Jackman says, "And somehow I feel that as evolved human beings it should always pull on your heartstrings." Watching tragedy ravage his homeland has simply made Jackman more committed to the various charities to which he lends his name and his time -- charities such as the Global Poverty Project and the Worldwide Orphans Foundation. By Jackman's lights, no good deed is ever wasted, and a helping hand offered on one continent can most definitely be felt on another. "I've travelled a lot," he says with gratitude. "And it makes the world seem so much smaller."