MUSICAL THEATRE CONCERT:
HUGH JACKMAN AT THE POW
6 JUL/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4 out of 5

He took Broadway by storm in a little show called The Boy From Oz -- and now, Hugh Jackman is stealing hearts in Toronto as The Boy From Awesome.

On stage at the Princess of Wales Theatre, where he opened Tuesday in Hugh Jackman In Concert, the man known to millions of movie fans as Wolverine certainly proves he's got more up his sleeves than a set of deadly and impressive scythes. In fact, as he has proved so conclusively in his Tony Award-winning turn in The aforementioned Boy from Oz and in several subsequent turns in everything from the Oscars to the Tony Awards, he's one of most talented, charming and (according to People Magazine circa 2008, and who are we to disagree?) dashingly sexy song-and-dance men on the planet.

He is, in fact, so talented and so good looking that he'd be awfully easy to hate if it weren't for the easy charm with which he invests everything he does -- a charm so potent, it seems, that he can transform an ordinary Toronto theatre audience into his devoted best friends in just over 100 minutes. Mind you, he doesn't do it alone. Backed by a tight 18-piece orchestra (under music director Patrick Vaccariello) and two lovely and talented backup singers, not to mention a brace of talent from his Australian homeland, Jackman is nothing if not generous in sharing the spotlight trained on him by lighting designer Ken Billington.

But Jackman also recognizes the fact that in this particular musical theatre banquet, he is the main course. And he dishes it out with open-hearted generosity, whether he's reprising his West End performance as Oklahoma!'s Curly, which is how he begins this show, or camping it up with something wonderfully akin to gay abandon as Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, featured later in the show. In between, he opens windows into his personal life with open-hearted confidence ­-- performing The Way You Look Tonight as a heartfelt tribute to his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, and presiding. proud papa-style, over his son Oscar's stage debut on the business end of a didgeridoo, in a moving tribute to his Australian homeland and its Aboriginal peoples.

And through it all it's Jackman at his best, fleshing out the story of his life and just generally charming his audience as he riffs on photos from his childhood and relives his career from its very beginnings in a school production of The Music Man through to the present day. Of course, he hits with disarming candour not only on his success as an action-adventure hero, but on other high points as well, including a touching little anecdote involving his father and a performance at Carnegie Hall.

And while the proceedings are sometimes contrived -- the man 'plucked' from the audience on opening night looked awfully familiar to anyone who has ever dealt with the Mirvish media relations department, one suspects -- it is never, ever hokey or patronizing. Instead, at every turn, Jackman seems to make it abundantly clear that in this moment -- whether he's riffing on the golden days of the movie musical, or feeling his way through a deeply memorable rendition of Carousel's Soliloquy, or reprising lesser-known Allen songs such as Tenterfield Saddler or Once Before I Go -- there is nowhere else he would rather be. And no one else for whom he would rather be doing it.

In the face of such open-hearted generosity, there's probably not a single person in his audience who doesn't know exactly how he feels. He's not so much a Wolverine in sheep's clothing as a simple, aw-shucks lady killer in tails.