The Best Evening of My Life with Hugh Jackman!

Thanks to Hugh Jackman, last night was the best night of my life. I wouldn't have thought that a day filled with travelling alongside a pretty hectic and exhausting schedule would pay off with the best day of my life. I knew I would have tons of fun but I never would have dreamed that this would be such a magical day full of wonders. This show made me realise that I really would enjoy Broadway and if I were to live in New York, I'd most likely spend all my money on Broadway and end up dying from hunger.

Anyway before I go off topic, which is something I do regularly, I'd like to talk about this wonderful musical Hugh Jackman honoured us with. This broadway show is called "An Evening with Hugh Jackman". There is no play, there is no scenario, there is no script, except the story of Hugh Jackman himself. The show was all about his personal experiences and his own life, his family, his favourite songs from his favourite musicals, or musicals he starred in. This wasn't just any Broadway show. This was something very private and personal, this was like having a glimpse into the life of Mr. Jackman and getting to know him on a much deeper level. It felt like he was having a conversation with one of his best friends as he gave us the story of his life starting from his childhood up until today. That's exactly why in a pre-show interview earlier, he said that the people who attended the show would know a lot more about him than anyone else who has seen ALL of his shows/movies. Indeed we did learn a great deal about him.

Before the show started, announcements were made about not being allowed to take photos/videos and we were kindly asked to turn off our phones, they told us not to forget that it was Wolverine we were watching so he would hunt us down. First of all, yea it was sort of funny but I don't like this Wolverine image always being projected upon Hugh Jackman, there were some disturbing moments during the show which suggested that people in Turkey only know Hugh Jackman from his X-Men movies which is shameful and a waste! I'll talk about these moments in details as I go along further in this post. Second of all, noone actually paid any attention to this announcement. Throughout the entire show everyone kept taking pictures with their flashes on! Many of us were quite bothered with it; I wish Hugh did indeed hunt them down! That's why this post will lack pictures from the show as I didn't take any!

The second announcement was made about the language of the show. As the show is mainly improvisation, most of the things Hugh says wouldn't be translated which drew a lot of negative feedback from the audience. But many people laughed at his jokes so either most people knew English or they joined in on the laughter of the people who actually understood the jokes. I really didn't like the translation quality of song lyrics either. Knowing English certainly has its rewards! 

Hugh Jackman started the show with a heartwarming "Merhaba İstanbul" (Hello İstanbul). His Turkish pronunciation was pretty dead on so he did his homework! :) Also, he was so obsessed with saying the Turkish names right that he kept repeating them even in the middle of his songs. By sharing with us; his obsession with Turkish Coffee, his Turkish heritage, his past Turkey visit 19 years ago and how much he loved the people and how much the city has changed for the better; he really managed to connect with the Turkish people. (He didn't need all that to connect with me though :P)

Then he showed us a couple of Wolverine moments, admitting that film executives hate that he does Broadway because he loses the weight he needs in order to be Wolverine. And realistically, he knows he will keep on being Wolverine. Hugh Jackman, let me be honest with you here: You are misinterpreting the Oscar winning movie "Birdman"! :D (And therefore I join the long line of people who mock Jackman for getting the wrong idea from Birdman).

After the Wolverine part he said he was mostly well known for his action movies but he admitted that he was a romantic at heart. After that he let us in on the secret of a happy life: Happy Wife, Happy Life. Then he told us a very personal story of when and how he met his wife Deborra, who was also among the audience, before dedicating a very romantic song to her. When the song was over, while we were applauding, he left the stage to join his wife in the audience; he hugged and then kissed her making the whole audience go "Awwwwww". This is probably when all of us women fell in love with him.

He also sang a song about his life in New York and how he didn't want to move there at first but he did as his wife Deborra was quite excited about it. Happy Wife, Happy Life remember? But the city grew on him and he really came to love NY; thus the essence of the song expressed his feelings beautifully.

It wasn't only his wife that Hugh Jackman honoured during the show, though. He also told us a sweet story of his dad and his reaction to Jackman's starring in Carousel as Billy Bigelow and he dedicated his favourite song from Carousel to his father.

Hugh Jackman also gave us an exclusive song from his upcoming musical "The Greatest Showman on Earth". He was joined by Bora Uzer, a Turkish singer, in a duet when the pair portrayed a scene from this musical. I really enjoyed this duet. I won't even complement on Jackman here as he was obviously magnificent. But I feel like I should pay special tribute to Bora Uzer. The original singer who was supposed to join Jackman for this duet got sick and they had to come up with a new name only days prior to the show. Bora was picked only 2 days before the opening night and thus had only 2 days to prepare for it. According to Jackman, Bora had never sung in English before, well we really couldn't tell as he was amazing so he deserved every single applause that we gave him at the end of the performance.

Bora Uzer joined Hugh Jackman on stage.

In the earlier paragraphs I mentioned that Turkish people only know Hugh Jackman from X-Men movies. There are a number of disturbing moments that led me to this theory. I call them disturbing because it was very awkward for Jackman as he was trying to involve the audience to join him on this conversation but it felt one-sided. He talked about getting a phone call from Steven Spielberg himself to host the Oscars (which was among my favourite Oscar shows in the last 10 years) and telling his wife that she was going to bed with the host of the 81st Academy Awards; to which his wife Deborra replied: "Billy Crystal is here?" which was actually among the best jokes but it got only a handful of laughters. Did people even know anything about Jackman hosting the Oscars or who Billy Crystal is or they simply didn't find it funny? I hope it's the last one...

Another touching moment was when Jackman started talking about taking on a project to build houses for an Aboriginal community in Bowen when he was 19 years old, saying that he was the happiest he ever was and that he wouldn't be an actor today if it wasn't for his dad who convinced him to go back to his studies. He explained how he was very happy to go back there for the shooting of his movie "Australia" also starring Nicole Kidman. He told us how he slept under a blanket of stars with his son, Oscar, and heartily recommended us to go to Bowen and do the same. Following this story, he asked how many of us actually saw Australia. I think only 7-8 people including me screamed in approval; to which disappointed Jackman replied "Hm I guess only 13 of you saw that". Isn't this just heartbreaking?

There was also little to no response when he was talking about The Boy From Oz and Les Misérables but people went mental when he talked about Wolverine. I sort of saw this coming as I mentioned many times before in my earlier posts that people of Turkey wouldn't really appreciate a good musical. I am 100% sure that 99% of the theatre didn't even know that Jackman won a Tony for his Peter Allen performance in The Boy From Oz... Obviously not everyone has to be interested in musicals enough to know all these information. However, if you are going to attend an event like this, at least do some research will you?

Yea, I am convinced. People only know him as Wolverine... If you want to get out of that demographic, I suggest you start from his magnificent movies like The Prestige and The Fountain... Start with them and move on to the rest! Not all of his movies are perfect obviously, but you just need to get rid of that limited view of him as an actor. As for his Broadway performances, there are tons of videos that can be found.

Back to the show; my most favourite moment in the show was when Hugh Jackman started singing Fever in the middle of the audience. Yea, he left the stage and started moving around row 3-4 when he randomly picked up a middle-aged woman. Things were surely getting hot in the theatre, I mean you must know the song Fever and even Hugh was asking whether the audience was feeling hot! (We were!) And the woman he picked from the audience was wearing a puffy parka coat (ironic enough?), so I guess that's why she was chosen or it was just random luck. Hugh Jackman led the woman, whom we will later recognise as Fatoş, to the stage and then asked his wife's permission to dance with her (adorable much? :P). Well they started dancing, of course the woman was blushing furiously, I mean her face was as if it were painted in cherry red. Then Jackman told us the purpose of Fatoş; to make another woman in the front row he kept picking on feel jealous. When she left the stage, she immediately started taking her coat off which was pointed out by Jackman himself; "She is taking her coat off!!!" which completely consumed the theatre in laughter! Damn, what a lucky woman. People all around me and including me kept commenting on how lucky she was :D Hugh Jackman kept saying her name in the remainder of show, even in the middle of some songs to make sure he was pronouncing it correctly or to simply pick on her even more :P

In short Jackman was pretty involved with the audience. He pointed at us to play a game, he made us keep the rhythm going with clicks and claps and he actually warned us when we stopped. He wanted us to sing along with him but sadly noone knew the lyrics to the songs so unfortunately he sang alone. Although as stiff as I am, I never would have thought this but I actually sang along very loudly during some songs, especially "Not The Boy Next Door" from "The Boy From Oz" musical, a song that I really, really, and I can't stress this enough, REALLY enjoy! It is quite upsetting that the theatre was completely silent during all the songs with the exception of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", I guess that's the only song that Turks know.... Yes we are there to listen to the man sing and dance but his voice was already filling the room, so some musicality from the audience would certainly improve the overall experience. I mean he WANTED us to join him after all! He even said multiple times; "Come on, you know this song", I guess he must have been disappointed to find out that noone actually knew any of those songs! Or maybe they were shy? If I am singing out loud, anyone else also must because I'm most likely the number 1 shy person on this planet!

My second most favourite moment in the show was when he performed "Singin' in the Rain" by Gene Kelly; another song I happily sang out loud. He was accompanied by 4 dancers, whom he called "Dream Girls" and during this number Jackman showcased his tap skills which is a genre I greatly enjoy watching. In some moments the orchestra would stop playing so the only music would come from Jackman's tap shoes!  This performance actually received the second loudest applause (the first was at the very end of course) and it was such a joy to watch.

The show was magical as I pointed out earlier but suffice it to say that I've still got some complaints though. None of them is about Hugh Jackman himself, he was brilliant, completely flawless. How could he even go wrong? However, my biggest complaint is about the Dream Girls and their singing performance. They were supposed to sing the original song from Anne Hathaway's most memorable scene in Les Misérables, a performance that won her an Oscar. I did hear some mumblings from them, I honestly can't call that singing. The orchestra brutally overwhelmed all 4 of their voices combined and we couldn't even hear a word that they were saying so I actually saw a lot of people from the audience looking up to read the translation of the lyrics instead of listening. I didn't have to as I played Anne Hathaway's voice in my head :P When Hugh Jackman would start singing, he would give the orchestra a run for their money with his powerful voice. So it was sort of disturbing to watch those Dream Girls in all of their singing performances "trying" to keep up with Jackman. I've got no complaints with their dancing though! To do what they did in heels... Supernatural...

My second complaint would be about the attitude of the orchestra. Hugh Jackman wanted to improv a song and wanted the orchestra to play random Turkish melodies. He almost asked each of them individually and we could see all of them shaking their heads. Wow, some attitude there! Only one saxophonist took on the challenge and tried to play but only did for about 10 seconds until he stopped and started shaking his head as well. Hugh had to almost beg for some Turkish themed music until 1-2 started to play random tunes and the rest of the orchestra joined them. It didn't even have any traditional Turkish melodies. This whole thing really annoyed me and I just wanted to get up on that stage and slap each and every one of them. You are Turkish musicians and you are playing on a stage in front of 2000 people, accompanying Hugh Jackman, someone who many times asked for a round of applause for his "great orchestra" and you'd let him and us the audience down like that. It was so unprofessional!

In final words, I will put this as simply as possible: This was the best night of my life. I can assure you that this night had some pretty tough competition too. Manchester United vs Bursaspor and Manchester United vs Galatasaray Champions League matches come to my mind but these two are easily replaced by this wonderful musical so thank you for this fantastic experience Hugh Jackman!

By the way, as I was writing this review I found out that the rest of Hugh Jackman's shows are cancelled. "An Evening with Hugh Jackman" would be in theatres from 17th until 20th of March but all his shows are cancelled due to a vocal hemorrhage so on his doctor's orders he won't be singing for 2 weeks. I honestly feel lucky to pick up my ticket for the opening day (and closing day it looks like).

I wish you a fast recovery Hugh Jackman. Get well soon! Here is his tweet on the issue:

Merhaba. I have a left vocal hemorrhage. At advice of Dr. Kocak Dr Korovin I will cancel my shows in Turkey. Make no mistake, I'll be back!

— Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) March 18, 2015