Hugh Jackman at Hollywood Bowl: “Greatest Showman” and more

Fick a black acoustic guitar to match his black tuxedo pants, Hugh Jackman walked on the Hollywood Bowl scene and said he was.

“A little Neil Diamond,” he said while the Hollywood Bowl orchestra accelerated the Go-Go self-improvement jive from “Crunchy Granola suite”.

A devoted student in the history of showbiz, the Australian singer and actor began his concert on Saturday evening, just as Diamond did half a century ago during the concert of the Greek theater captured on his classic LP “Hot August Night”.

However, Diamond was only one of the flamboyant shows that Jackman was aspired to imitate as he took the opening evening of the 2025 Bowl season. Later in the concert, the 56-year-old sang a mixture of songs from Peter Allen, the Australian singer-songwriter and Bon vivant that Jackman described on Broadway in 2003 in “The Boy from Oz”. And then there was PT Barnum, whose career as a creator of shows inspired the 2017 blockbuster “The Greatest Showman”, which featured Jackman as a Barnum and generated a soundtrack with surprise which has become quadruple platinum.

“There are 17,000 of you, and if one of you has not seen” the greatest showman “, you may think at the moment: this guy is great-Con, “said Jackman at the crowd, panting very slightly after singing the song’s title song, which has more than 625 million flows on Spotify.

The success of “Showman”, despite the fact that Jackman, the Drazle-Dazzle brand of Jackman, is quite rare in pop music these days among male artists. (The moment of Théâtre -Kid which contributed to making “bad guys” a phenomenon was almost exclusively designed – and almost exclusively benefiting – women such as Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Chappell Roan and Laufey.) Which makes Jackman’s jazzing even more remarkable than for many Marvel films.

Before Jackman’s performance on Saturday, the Hollywood Bowl orchestra, led by Thomas Wilkins, played a brief set of orchestral music which included selections of John Ottman’s score for “X2: X-Men United”.

The ascent of Benson Boone, with his mustache and backflips, suggests that Jackman could still find heirs to perpetuate the tradition he has bequeathed by Diamond and the rest. But of course, this assumes that Jackman is looking to pass the stick, which was not at all the impression you obtained from his fiery and athletic show of 90 minutes at the Bowl.

In addition to the stuff of “The Greatest Showman” and a swing tribute to Frank Sinatra, he made a second piece of diamond – “Sweet Caroline”, of course, which he said to appear in an upcoming film in which he plays an imitator of diamonds – and a couple of Jean Valjean of “Les Misérables”, who sang Jackman in the 2012 film. (With an Emmy, a Grammy and two Tonys in his name, he is an Oscars of Egot’s status.)

For “you will be found”, “dear Evan Hansen”, he sat behind a piano with tail and was accompanied a little; For the “Ya Got Dol”, from the motor mouth, to “The Music Man” – the first show he has ever made like a high school student, he said – he was released in the crowd, pulling among the boxes of the bowl and interacting with the members of the public while he sang.

“I just saw a lot of friends while I was crossing,” he said on his return on stage. “Hello, Melissa Etherridge and Linda. Hello, Jess Platt. Hi, Steph, Hi, David, Hi, Sophia, Hi, Orlando – So many friends. Very difficult to say hello to friends and make this dialogue.” He praised again, this time more Showerly. “It’s like 53 degrees and I was sweating.”

The comic centerpiece of the show was a version of “Merci God i’m a country Boy” by John Denver that Jackman has redone to celebrate his roots as “Australian boy”. There have been jokes of good humor on the shark attacks and the Koalas and Margot Robbie, as well as a few sharply pointed politicians, one about the way “our leaders are not 100 years old”-“I quickly leave this joke”, he added-and another who rhymed “life underneath is really fun” with “I never have to worry: does this guy have a pistol?”

The emotional centerpiece, on the other hand, was “showman” of “A Million Dreams”, for which the Hollywood Bowl orchestra was joined by 18 members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic youth orchestra, Los Angeles. The song itself is rather cringing teeth, with a lyrical buried by shots and a melody that you have heard before a million times. But Jackman sold his cheesy idealism with the sincerity of a Huckster, you couldn’t help but buy.