Hugh Jackman : Vogue Magazine March 2022

Vogue Magazine, March 2022. VOGUE Behind The Scenes , photo shoot .
Hugh Jackman Is Back on Broadway in The Music Man, And Not a Moment Too Soon .

76 TROMBONES, 1 JACKMAN

Hugh Jackman wearing a Stan vest. Thom Browne shirt. Billy Reid pants.
Photographed by Ethan James Green
Vogue March issue March 2022 . (The Music Man on Broadway)

#Shorts #HughJackman #TheMusicMan #Vogue #broadway #TheMusicManOnBroadway #TheMusicManBroadway #WinterGardenTheatre #MusicMan #Logan #musicmanbway #HaroldHill #MarianParoo #SuttonFoster #VogueMagazine #Shorts

Jackman, when we speak, seems to have studied The Music Man with the exactitude of a Shakespearean scholar, and that may be because he made his stage debut in a production of the show at his all-boys high school in Sydney. (It was a chance, he says, to meet girls.) “I was Salesman Number 2,” Jackman tells me. After a pause, he adds, stoically, “David Anderson was Harold Hill.” I jokingly ask, “Yeah, but where is he now?” and Jackman tells me that he went on to become prime minister of Australia. For a second, largely thanks to his flawless deadpan and my hazy knowledge of Australian politics, I believe him. Whatever Jackman may have lacked vis-à-vis a young David Anderson, by the time he got cast in Trevor Nunn’s 1998 revival of Oklahoma! at London’s Royal National Theatre, he had clearly upped his game. With only leading roles in Melbourne productions of Beauty and the Beast and Sunset Boulevard under his belt, Jackman gave a star-making performance, establishing himself as a one-of-a-kind musical-­theater actor in the classical tradition, who nonetheless felt completely of the moment, with seemingly effortless charisma and a hint of mischief. As The Music Man’s choreographer, Warren Carlyle, recalls: “From the first minute of Oklahoma!, it was clear that he was born to be on the stage. He fills that space like nobody else.”

And yet, Jackman’s musical appearances on the boards have been limited—it turned out that his star quality translated to the screen (and the box office), as he has demonstrated in no uncertain terms, starting with his feral turn as Wolverine in 2000’s X-Men, and its various sequels. He won a 2003 Tony for his high-wattage portrayal of the Australian singer-songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz and cemented his reputation as the greatest song-and-dance man of his generation with his 2011 one-man show, which he revamped and took on a world tour in 2019. But otherwise, Jackman’s musical comedy career has been largely speculative: He’s been attached to various stage musical projects that never came to pass, notably one about the life of Houdini, and it’s seemed as though every announcement of a new production came with a not-so-veiled hint that Jackman would be its star. Through it all, people kept telling him that Harold Hill was the perfect role for him, and he kept brushing the idea aside. Then, one morning a few years ago, he says, “I woke up and was literally like, Why haven’t I done The Music Man? And so I rang my agent, and he’d just had a call that day about it. And so it sort of felt as if it were meant to be…. Now, I’m a little mad at myself for putting it off so long.”

The Music Man was set to open October 22, 2020, under the aegis of the impresario Scott Rudin, known as much for his impeccable taste and lavish spending as for his volcanic temper. Rudin brought in the director Jerry Zaks, who had staged his smash 2017 revival of Hello, Dolly!, starring Bette Midler, and assembled the rest of that production’s blue-chip creative and design team. If anything related to Broadway could be called a sure thing, this was it. Then came the pandemic, which put the production on indefinite hold. And along the way, Rudin’s allegedly abusive behavior toward assistants was brought to light, and he stepped down as the show’s producer.

Jackman has a reputation as an unabashed family man, so he was happy as a clam riding out the lockdown with his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, and their by-and-large grown children, Oscar and Ava, assembling jigsaw puzzles, baking bread, binge-watching everything from Ken Burns documentaries to The Sopranos. “The best thing about it,” Jackman says, “was getting to have stolen time with my 16- and 21-year-old, who had zero interest in being in a house with me—but they had no choice. Being around them so much and getting to know them better—who they’ve become—was really, really lovely.”

Vogue March issue (2022)
By Adam Green