When Hugh Jackman returned to his signature role of the superhero Wolverine last year, it was half a flex and half a retreat. On one hand, Deadpool & Wolverine has since become Jackman’s biggest movie ever, with well over $1bn in global grosses, with audiences obviously relishing the revival of the character as much as Deadpool himself did. On the other, Jackman played this part for 17 years before hanging up his claws with the elegiac Logan; going back after that feels like an admission, on some level, that his movie-star career can’t function the same way without it. In turn, this makes Jackman’s stint of 2025 live shows – two dozen of them through October at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall, as well as a summer headlining gig at BST Hyde Park in London – part victory lap through the song-and-dance material he clearly loves, and part reassertion of his standalone star quality.
As the latter, it’s admittedly convincing – could many major other movie stars sell out multiple nights at Radio City doing a bunch of Broadway and Broadway-adjacent songs? Though Hugh Jackman: From New York, With Love isn’t a literal one-man operation – it employs a small group of back-up singers and dancers and even, on the Saturday evening show, a solo performed by the stage veteran Lauren Blackman – it rests entirely on Jackman’s shoulders. He clearly takes the responsibility seriously while attempting to wear it lightly; early in Saturday night’s show, he quickly outlined the shape of the approximately 110-minute program (“no encore, no interval”) and playfully showed off a handy guide to the locations of the Radio City bathrooms, encouraging people to step out as needed, rather than waiting for the right strategic moment. In other words, the atmosphere was more pop-crooner concert than Broadway revue. The setlist will seemingly change, at least slightly, from show to show, drawing from a pool of musicals that includes The Music Man, Oklahoma!, Les Miserables, The Boy from Oz, and the film sensation The Greatest Showman.
The last musical provided a lot of material for Saturday’s show; the majority of the soundtrack was played in full, to the delight of the crowd, though Jackman humbly passed on the opportunity to open the set with The Greatest Show (it was played second). A number of Peter Allen songs from The Boy from Oz, meanwhile, were placed together in a medley, providing a bridge to less bombast-friendly numbers. Indeed, it was oddly endearing to watch Jackman try to find ways to pay in-show tribute to projects from outside the musical genre; hence an abbreviated dance routine set to Bye Bye Bye as a kind of sidelong (and, frankly, unnecessary) nod to Deadpool & Wolverine, and, most unexpectedly, a cover of an Alexi Murdoch song featured in the opening of his robot-boxing picture Real Steel. He even offered a preview of sorts for his next film, Song Sung Blue, where he plays part of a Neil Diamond tribute band, by warbling Sweet Caroline in full wedding-reception cheesiness, crowd-supplied “ba ba ba” and all.
In moments like these, Jackman rides a line between charm and smarm, and not every performance on Saturday was equally showstopping. He rattled off Ya Got Trouble from The Music Man with impressive precision, but sounded a little wobbly on You Will Be Found, a number from Dear Evan Hansen – not a Jackman show, mind, but one with songs by Greatest Showman songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. The backstory around some of his choices was often as entertaining as the songs themselves, as when he preceded Stars from Les Miserables with an account of using it to audition for Beauty and the Beast on Broadway and biffing the final soaring note. He also got genuinely, touchingly choked up remembering his late father.
Fans, then, will probably come away from the show satisfied with Jackman’s razzle-dazzle energy and relentless positivity. But as impressive a feat as this is, it still feels like an incomplete picture of the man’s talent. Just as any additional Wolverine movies will probably hit the same notes as the earlier ones, a show like From New York, With Love is more feature-length encore than innovation, and one that must naturally subtract some of the versatility that makes Jackman such a dynamic performer. Some of his best work, in movies like Bad Education and The Prestige, has nothing to do with comic-book spectacle or soaring melodies. Few actors could sustain a hybrid residency and concert tour – but if more of them could, we’d probably get fewer great movies and shows from them. Still, we should let Jackman and his most devoted fans have this moment of triumph. It may be a placeholder, but it’s also a reminder that Jackman’s dazzling talent is far from spent.
Hugh Jackman will perform on Broadway on dates until October and headlines BST Hyde Park on 6 July
