A companion piece to narrows' photos -- Ben Brantley's NY Times review of the Carnegie Hall concert version:
THEATER REVIEW; A Barker, a Mill Worker and Oh, That Fatal Chemistry
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: June 8, 2002, Saturday
Certain people, no matter what their size, seem to turn into giants when they set foot onstage. The Australian actor Hugh Jackman, as it happens, is a tall man. But that doesn't account for his towering presence on Thursday night at Carnegie Hall. It's not that Mr. Jackman, a fledgling movie star (''Kate and Leopold,'' ''X-Men''), is larger than life. It's that he makes real life look large.
This fine alchemy was a distinct asset in the stirring concert presentation of ''Carousel,'' a one-night benefit for Carnegie Hall. Mr. Jackman, a vibrant Curly in the recent London revival of ''Oklahoma!,'' can switch on an embattled air of virility that, combined with his conversational way with a song, makes him a natural for the hardy heroes of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
With the incomparable Audra McDonald playing Julie Jordan to Mr. Jackman's Billy Bigelow, ''If I Loved You'' -- that great yearning duet of awkward courtship -- never sounded more affecting. The tentativeness, the passion, the sweetness and the potential danger: all those elements seemed newly fresh as a rough-hewn carousel barker and a virginal factory worker once again resisted and succumbed to the laws of attraction in a coastal town in Maine in the 19th century.
It helped, of course, having no less a conductor than Leonard Slatkin and the Orchestra of St. Luke's to bring out the full rhapsody of Richard Rodgers's most beautiful score. From the first eddying strains of ''The Carousel Waltz,'' which opens the show, this was music you just wanted to bathe in.
Directed by Walter Bobbie, this ''Carousel'' definitely put the music first. With Oscar Hammerstein II's book streamlined by John Weidman and Mr. Bobbie, the production was far sparer than the more fully dressed concert renderings from the Encores! program at City Center.
There was no choreography (although the ballet music seemed to have been played in full), no props and little interpretive action, though there was one very memorable kiss between between Mr. Jackman and Ms. McDonald. Such abstinence allowed you to become newly aware of how completely Rodgers's music can both set a stage and paint a character.
The chief performers, smoothly supported by the Concert Chorale of New York, knew how to complete their individual portraits, creating full characters with their songs and rarely simply wallowing in the melodies. They included Norbert Leo Butz (a Tony nominee for ''Thou Shalt Not''), in evocatively ragged-edged voice as the thuggish Jigger Craigin; Judy Kaye (of ''Mamma Mia!'') as the maternal Nettie Fowler; and, in delightful nonsinging sketches, Blythe Danner and Philip Bosco.
As Carrie Pipperidge and Enoch Snow, the show's second romantic leads, Lauren Ward and Jason Danieley presented winningly comic portraits that were in telling contrast to the more brooding characterizations of Ms. McDonald and Mr. Jackman. Carrie and Enoch seem destined to come as close to ''happily ever after'' as ''Carousel'' allows.
But such a rose-colored fate is not what the show is about. Though it may end on a note of spiritual uplift, ''Carousel'' is memorable for finding the pain and the pleasure in the kind of love that will never run smooth. It was a sensibility heard with all its cutting and caressing edges when Ms. McDonald turned the ostensibly simple ''What's the Use of Wond'rin'?'' into a haunted ballad.
Mr. Jackman's voice may not have the operatic richness of Ms. McDonald's, but it's a clean and deeply expressive instrument that brought an almost Shakespearean psychological intricacy to Billy's ''Soliloquy.'' It must have been a bit daunting for Mr. Jackman to have John Raitt, the original Billy Bigelow of 1945, introduce the evening.
But without eclipsing Mr. Raitt's fully fleshed rendering of the character, which still leaps out at you from the first cast recording, Mr. Jackman put his own stamp on the role of a man of fatally divided impulses. He is indeed made for the musical stage. Let's hope that Hollywood doesn't make a prisoner of him.
CAROUSEL
In concert. Music by Richard Rodgers; book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on Ferenc Molnar's play ''Liliom,'' as adapted by Benjamin F. Glazer; orchestrations by Don Walker; concert adaptation by John Weidman and Walter Bobbie. Conducted by Leonard Slatkin; featuring the Orchestra of St. Luke's and the Concert Chorale of New York. Directed by Mr. Bobbie; musical consultant and choral director, Ben Whiteley; costume consultant, John Lee Beatty; stage consultant, Jane Greenwood; lighting by Alan Adelman; sound by Acme Sound Partners. Presented by Carnegie Hall, in association with the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization. At the Isaac Stern Auditorium in Carnegie Hall.
WITH: Blythe Danner (Mrs. Mullin), Audra McDonald (Julie Jordan), Lauren Ward (Carrie Pipperidge), Hugh Jackman (Billy Bigelow), Judy Kaye (Nettie Fowler), Jason Danieley (Enoch Snow), Norbert Leo Butz (Jigger Craigin), Philip Bosco (Starkeeper/Dr. Seldon) and Eden Riegel (Louise).
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