Strumming a black acoustic guitar to match his black tuxedo pants and jacket, Hugh Jackman strolled onto the stage of the Hollywood Bowl and let the viewers know exactly what it was in for.
“Little bit of Neil Diamond,” he stated because the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra revved up the go-go self-improvement jive of “Crunchy Granola Suite.”
A devoted pupil of showbiz historical past, the Australian singer and actor was beginning his live performance Saturday evening simply as Diamond did half a century in the past on the Greek Theatre gig famously captured on his traditional “Hot August Night” LP.
But Diamond was simply one of many flamboyant showmen Jackman aspired to emulate as he headlined the opening evening of the Bowl’s 2025 season. Later within the live performance, the 56-year-old sang a medley of tunes by Peter Allen, the Australian songwriter and Manhattan bon vivant whom Jackman portrayed on Broadway in 2003 in “The Boy From Oz.” After which there was P.T. Barnum, whose profession as a maker of spectacle impressed the 2017 blockbuster “The Greatest Showman,” which starred Jackman as Barnum and spawned a surprise-hit soundtrack that went quadruple-platinum.
“There’s 17,000 of you, and if any of you did not see ‘The Greatest Showman,’ you might be thinking right now: This guy is super-confident,” Jackman informed the gang, panting ever so barely after he sang the film’s title music, which has greater than 625 million streams on Spotify.
The success of “Showman” however, Jackman’s model of stage-and-screen razzle-dazzle feels pretty uncommon in pop music lately amongst male performers. (The theater-kid second that helped make “Wicked” a phenomenon was nearly solely engineered — and has nearly solely benefited — girls similar to Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Chappell Roan and Laufey.) What makes Jackman’s jazz-handing much more exceptional is that to many he’s greatest referred to as the extravagantly mutton-chopped Wolverine character from the Marvel motion pictures.
Earlier than Jackman’s efficiency on Saturday, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, carried out by Thomas Wilkins, performed a quick set of orchestral music that included picks from John Ottman’s rating for “X2: X-Men United.”
The ascent of Benson Boone, together with his mustache and his backflips, means that Jackman might but discover inheritors to hold on the custom he himself was bequeathed by Diamond and the remaining. However in fact that assumes that Jackman is trying to move the baton, which was by no means the impression you bought from his spirited and athletic 90-minute present on the Bowl.
Along with stuff from “The Greatest Showman” and a swinging tribute to Frank Sinatra, he did a second Diamond tune — “Sweet Caroline,” naturally, which he stated figures into an upcoming film wherein he performs a Diamond impersonator — and a few Jean Valjean’s numbers from “Les Misérables,” which Jackman sang within the 2012 film adaptation that earned him an Academy Award nomination for lead actor. (With an Emmy, a Grammy and two Tonys to his title, he’s an Oscar win away from EGOT standing.)
Hugh Jackman with members of the L.A. Phil’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles on Saturday evening.
(Timothy Norris)
For “You Will Be Found,” from “Dear Evan Hansen,” he sat down behind a grand piano and accompanied himself for a bit; for the motor-mouthed “Ya Got Trouble,” from “The Music Man” — the primary present he ever did as a highschool child, he identified — he got here out into the gang, weaving among the many Bowl’s packing containers and interacting with viewers members as he sang.
“I just saw a lot of friends as I went through,” he stated when he returned to the stage. “Hello, Melissa Etheridge and Linda. Hello, Jess Platt. Hi, Steph, hi, David, hi, Sophia, hi, Orlando — so many friends. Very difficult to say hello to friends and still do that dialogue.” He was panting once more, this time extra showily. “It’s like 53 degrees and I’m sweating.”
The present’s comedic centerpiece was a model of John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” that Jackman remade to have a good time his roots as an “Aussie boy.” There have been good-natured jokes about shark assaults and koalas and Margot Robbie, in addition to a couple of pointed political gibes, one about how “our leaders aren’t 100 years old” — “I’m moving on from that joke fast,” he added — and one other that rhymed “Life down under is really quite fun” with “I never have to worry: Does that guy have a gun?”
The emotional centerpiece, in the meantime, was “Showman’s” “A Million Dreams,” for which the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra was joined by 18 members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles. The music itself is fairly cringe, with a lyric slowed down by cliches and a melody you’ve heard a zillion instances earlier than. However Jackman offered its corny idealism with a huckster’s sincerity you couldn’t assist however purchase.
