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Force Majeure
Playing a corrupt cop, Hugh Jackman makes his long-awaited return to Broadway
(with nary a show tune in sight). By Adam Green.
Musical theater, like nature, abhors a vacuum, especially one caused by the
prolonged absence of Hugh Jackman. Not that anyone’s counting, but it’s been six
years since the man who is Wolverine made his Broadway debut in The Boy from
Oz, bowling over audiences, winning a Tony, and raking it in at the box
office as the flamboyant Australian singer-songwriter Peter Allen. The
subsequent void has been filled by endless speculation and fervent prayer.
Jackman’s name has been attached to every musical production from last season’s
revival of Pal Joey to a short-lived singing-and-dancing adaptation of
Gone With the Wind, and I have no doubt that somewhere, a producer is
dreaming of him in the title role of Hello, Dolly!
This month, Jackman is finally back where he belongs—on the New York
boards—but he’s trading in his tap shoes for a badge and a gun to play a cop
gone bad in the Chicago playwright Keith Huff’s lean, nasty, decidedly unmusical
psychological thriller, A Steady Rain. Even in a high-wattage fall
season that has Sienna Miller tackling Strindberg on Forty-second Street while
her ex Jude Law takes on Shakespeare a few blocks away, Jackman’s return to the
stage would qualify as the biggest game in town. But throw in Daniel Craig,
Jackman’s costar in this two-hander about loyalty, betrayal, and the deadly game
of male bonding, and you’ve got Ali vs. Frazier, Borg vs. McEnroe, and Godzilla
vs. Mothra rolled into one.
“I’m a huge fan of Daniel’s, even though there was a period there where I
lost quite a few film roles to him,” Jackman says with a laugh. “It felt like we
were circling around each other. So this is a case of ‘If you can’t beat ’em,
join ’em.’ ”
Over breakfast at the Mercer hotel in New York (poached eggs, ham,
seven-grain toast, and an espresso, if you must know), Jackman is laid-back and
affable—a regular bloke. But even unshaven in a T-shirt and jeans, the guy
radiates that ineffable something. Born in Sydney in 1968, Jackman never
envisioned a career in musical theater. Granted, he made his stage debut at age
eight in Camelot (“I was probably the most squeaky-voiced King Arthur
of all time”), and when he was twelve he briefly considered taking dance
classes. (“When I told my brother, he said, ‘Oh, you poof,’ and that was it—end
of conversation.”) But Jackman’s plan was to become a serious stage actor. Then,
on a lark, he auditioned for the Australian company of Beauty and the Beast. “I sang ‘Stars’ from Les Miz, and my voice cracked on the last
note, which really made me feel terrific,” he recalls. The music director told
him to take some singing lessons and come back for another shot. He did and got
the part—and a song-and-dance man was born.
Now Jackman is finally making his professional debut in a dramatic play. Told
in a series of overlapping monologues that build on and sometimes contradict one
another, A Steady Rain depicts a few dark days in the life of two
Chicago cops: Denny (Jackman), an aging bad boy with a racist streak, a violent
temper, and a seriously strained marriage, and his partner, Joey (Craig), a
recovering alcoholic with a poetic soul who may not be quite as true a friend as
he appears. One night, they make a very bad call—they return a young boy to a
guardian who turns out to be a serial killer—and things go downhill from
there.
Bristling with emotional urgency, the play starts out in familiar territory
and quickly careens through one twisting alley after another, leaving us without
any bearings. As soon as Jackman read it, he wanted in: “I loved the idea of
returning to the basics—the spoken word, two actors, and the audience.”
That spareness was born of necessity, says Huff, a Chicago-theater fixture
who supports his playwriting with a day job as the managing editor of
Orthopaedic Knowledge Online, the Web journal of the American Academy of
Orthopaedic Surgeons. “I cut my teeth in tiny black-box theaters,” he says. “I
thought, Well, we can’t compete with film and we can’t compete with theaters
that have big budgets, so why not go back to the primacy of storytelling? I was
surprised by how theatrical it ended up being, by the tragic power of it.”
Originally staged at the Chicago Dramatists theater, with local actors who
looked more like middle-aged cops than superheroes, A Steady Rain got
rave reviews and brought New York producers sniffing around. When Huff learned
that the superb Irish director John Crowley (The Pillowman) was going
to stage his play on Broadway and that Jackman and Craig were going to be its
stars, it was, he recalls, “a pleasant surprise.” But there were concerns. “One
of the producers told me, ‘Keith, I don’t think there’s 3 percent body fat
between the two of them,’ ” Huff says. “So I cut a line where Hugh talks about
his spare tire. When he got it, he called from wherever he was on vacation, and
he was pissed. He said that he was pounding back beers to put on weight. We’ll
see.”
Hearing Jackman talk about his passion for working out and seeing the
tangible results, it’s hard to imagine that he’s going to do a full-on
Raging Bull for this role. But he and Craig are heading to Chicago to
hang out with real policemen and working with a dialect coach to capture the way
they speak. And there’s no question that Jackman will be showing audiences a new
side. “Denny is very unpredictable, very explosive—and it ain’t all Mr. Nice
Guy, that’s for sure,” Jackman says. “But there’s a charisma to him, and he
certainly takes the space, wherever he is.”
Next up for Jackman is a screen comedy called Avon Man; then it’s
back to the stage to fulfill a longtime dream in a yet-to-be-chosen Shakespeare
play directed by Trevor Nunn. And song-and-dance buffs can breathe easy: He’s
developing a film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic
Carousel and considering two new musicals, one of them based on the
life of Houdini, for a return to Broadway. If Jackman seems to be taking his
time, he’s just being cautious. “There’s no middle ground with a musical,” he
says. “It’s either great or it stinks to high heaven.”
At one point during our interview, the producer Harvey Weinstein, who is also
having breakfast at the Mercer, spots Jackman and makes his way over to say
hello. As it happens, Weinstein has recently held a reading of a new musical
based on the film Finding Neverland, about J. M. Barrie, the author of
Peter Pan. “The score is absolutely gorgeous,” he tells Jackman. “And
what a moving story.” Then, as if it has just popped into his head, he adds,
“You know, I think it could be a terrific part for you.”