Tape 212: Jackman/Phantom
I’ve had a few people recently ask “So what’s the deal with this Hugh Jackman show? Is it for this year’s Fringe? When are you doing it in London?” and variations on that kind of gubbins. And to answer the last of those questions first, very excitingly, I’ve just booked in a couple of work-in-progress dates at Soho Theatre at the end of August, so those of you who aren’t going up to the Edinburgh Fringe and live vaguely near London will also get an opportunity to see it this summer! And while I have written a little bit about the show here before, in particular my reasons for spending two years developing it for next year’s Fringe rather than rushing it to capitalise on early buzz, the fact that it’s intended to be a 2027 show means I haven’t really actually said all that much about it in public yet, outside of letting people know that it’s happening.
But as interest in it starts to ramp up (and as I have four fairly high-profile performances of it to plug in August, my God the promo never ends), I thought perhaps it was time to start taking the wraps off it a bit and answering some F.A.Q.s (or F.A. Hughs, as I like to call them specifically in relation to this show):
Genuinely baffled and slightly overwhelmed that I have been able to squeeze this many accolades and nice write-ups onto a promotional image for a show within just six work-in-progress performances. Inevitably the rate of accolade acquisition will dip as the show progresses, but for now I will exercise my right to bask in it.
F.A. HUGH No. 1 – WHAT IS IT?
Joz Norris Is Hugh Jackman Is The Phantom Of The Opera is a musical character-comedy extravaganza in which I play frustrated Australian Hollywood superstar Hugh Jackman. “Why frustrated?” you ask, “he seems to have a pretty successful career.” Well yes, you’d think that, but what you might not realise is that 20 years ago Andrew Lloyd Webber offered Hugh Jackman the title role in his movie of The Phantom Of The Opera, which eventually went to Gerard Butler. Hugh turned it down, and while I imagine the real Hugh doesn’t often think about this considering that film is widely derided and he is very rich and famous, in the context of the show, Hugh has spent the last two decades regretting this decision and wondering about how his life might have played out if he had just made a different choice. During the show, circumstances conspire to give him a second chance at the role that he wanted more than any other, and the show therefore becomes an attempt to rewrite history, correct the mistakes of the past, and forge a bright new future, if such a thing can ever be done. It starts out as a fairly simple character comedy show, then shifts into something a bit more narrative and conceptual, then goes completely insane at the end. A fairly standard show structure for me by this point.
F.A. HUGH No. 2 – WHY HUGH JACKMAN?
An old friend of mine once observed that Hugh Jackman and I have very similar singing styles, in that we both absolutely fucking belt it and don’t allow nuance or shading within a hundred yards of whatever we’re singing. I’ve always found this parallel quite funny, and then last year I watched Les Mis and became fascinated with how seriously Hugh Jackman takes everything he does even when what he’s doing is completely fucking stupid. I wrote a 10-minute routine as Hugh Jackman for an ACMS gig, and the more I did it the more I started to recognise funny parallels between him and me – I am also a guy who takes things way too seriously and overthinks everything even though 99% of what I do is utter nonsense, after all. I have a theory that character comedy is just stand-up that’s pretending to be unfolding in real-time – rather than standing onstage and saying “This thing happened to me the other day,” you stand onstage and say “This thing is happening to me right now.” Other than that, they’re more similar as art-forms than I think a lot of people acknowledge. A stand-up’s persona is as much of a fictional creation as a character comedian’s character is, and by contrast I think the best comedy characters aren’t characters at all – they’re vessels for however that character comedian currently feels about themself. This is all a long-winded way of saying that, as I became more and more obsessed by Hugh Jackman and kept finding him funnier and funnier, it became apparent that he was currently the best vessel to allow me to be myself onstage.
F.A. HUGH No. 3 – WHY PHANTOM?
I don’t know what it says about me that I was obsessed with The Phantom Of The Opera from a young age. Probably it says that I was an angst-ridden teenage boy who had trouble expressing his feelings and kept falling in love with people I believed I was unworthy of. These days I can look at Phantom much more objectively, but I continue to find the music profoundly moving even if its central character is an absolute bellend. At uni I used to blast the soundtrack at full volume in my room and try to hit the high notes. I could never manage it and would sometimes nurse a private hurt that I would never play the Phantom – no matter what else I did with my life, there was one dream that would never come true. Then last year Luke Rollason asked me to narrate his Stepdads Les Mis show in character as the Phantom and I found that, bizarrely, something had happened to my voice since I was eighteen and I now could hit the high notes (I might be singing it all an octave down, actually, that might be it). Jon Brittain, who directed You Wait. Time Passes. last year, observed that these two recent character routines I’d been developing – Hugh Jackman and the Phantom – spoke to each other quite easily because they were both musical theatre-related, and it would be quite easy to combine them into a single show that would have a built-in marketing hook because it was actually about things people already like. The theory being that this would be a much easier sell than “Would you like to come and see this conceptual meta-theatrical narrative comedy show about making art and dedicating your life to something pointless? It contains a grand artistic statement but I can’t tell you what it is because not knowing what it is is key to the viewing experience,” which proved to be a really tough sell during the first week of the Fringe last year until the reviews came out.
F.A. HUGH No. 4 – SO IS IT ABOUT ANYTHING?
Yes and no. One of the rules for the show is that I’m not allowed to labour the point, or try to be clever, or meaningful. Last year’s show was effectively forty-five minutes of me going “Look, I’m being clever” in order to justify fifteen minutes of total stupidity. Happily, the critics took the bait and all lauded it as being very clever and meaningful. This year, in recognition of the fact that the final 15 minutes was everyone’s favourite bit, I’m making a show that is a full hour of stupidity, with all the clever and meaningful bits hidden away. But yes, it is about something, because I am who I am. It’s about regret, and making mistakes, and coming to terms with the decisions you made, and giving yourself permission to try. “What, like last year’s show?” Yes, like last year’s show. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it – we are all just making the same show over and over, in different clothes. This year, it’s wearing Hugh Jackman’s clothes (jeans and a black T-shirt).
F.A. HUGH No. 5 – WHAT ARE THE OTHER RULES FOR THE SHOW?
Other than “Don’t try to be clever, don’t try to be meaningful,” I think the other big mission statements are:
- Serve the audience first and foremost. The point of the show is that it is a show that audiences can come to in order to have a really good, fun, stupid, dumb time. Anything not fundamentally serving that in some way has no place in the show
- It’s not a parody show. I have no interest in making a show that only works if you know Hugh Jackman and the Phantom of the Opera really well. There’s a layer of jokes which will be particularly appreciated by that section of the audience, but it also has to function as a show about a generic frustrated actor character who goes to great lengths to get the job of his dreams. The specifics are the garnish that make it easier to sell, not the main dish itself.
- I have nothing to prove. This might sound like it contradicts the “Serve the audience” rule, but I’m finding that they’re working together quite nicely. I made last year’s show in a spirit of feeling like I had a lot to prove, to myself and others. I also feel like I proved it. So this year the entire show feels like something I’m doing from a place of confidence – I know what I’m good at, I know what audiences enjoy about my work, I know what critics enjoy about my work, I know what I like making. I don’t feel any anxiety around this show at all, I just feel like I know how to follow my instincts and let the work speak for itself. To be honest, this rule is an absolute game-changer – I’ve never made anything from this mindset before, and it’s absolutely transformative. I wish I’d discovered it sooner, but of course it’s something you can only find when you’re ready to find it.
F.A. HUGH No. 6 – HUGH ELSE IS WORKING ON IT?
Up to now it’s been something I’ve mostly been working on by myself, because all my shows start that way before I’m ready to open them out to let the collaborative phase begin. As I mentioned, Jon Brittain initially planted the seed of what this show would be, and has already made some really great suggestions on it and fed in some really great ideas. And as ever, Miranda Holms has proven to be a huge influence on the show as well, partly because she has to hear me bang on about it all the time. She’s written a few really funny jokes for it and helped solve a bunch of practical logistical issues already. But we’ve yet to properly begin pulling it apart and actively working on it as a team, because there’s this year’s Fringe to get out of the way first. I’m also hoping to get my dear friend and regular movement coach Grace Gibson to do some work on it with me, because if ever there was a show that could benefit from a choreographer’s eye, it’s the one that is a loose adaptation of one of the biggest musicals of all time. I’m sure there’ll be other people contributing to the production as it unfolds, but for now that’s the core team!
So that’s all for now! If you’ve not seen it yet but are excited to see what I’ve been cooking up and happen to be in or near Edinburgh or London in August (or, indeed, Berlin in July), I’d love you to come and see it! Perhaps you’ll come out saying “Wow, that really was the Greatest Show,” though I must reiterate, you do not need to understand this reference in order to enjoy it.
A Quick Plug – This is of course all about one of the shows I’m doing as a one-off at the Fringe this year, but if anyone missed last year’s smash hit absurdist meditation on creativity, You Wait. Time Passes, it’s also coming back for two performances as part of the amazing Shedinburgh programme! I’ll be ramping up the promo for these shows as well over the coming weeks, but if you want to see what all the fuss was about, you can book tickets now from the Shedinburgh website.
A Cool New Thing In Comedy – The second series of Horrible Science is out, and is as charming and stupid as ever! I loved being a part of the writing team on both series of this show so far and, while I think my sketch this year didn’t make it into the final edit (I’ve not watched the whole series yet so I may be surprised!), it’s always such a joy watching this fantastic cast have fun with a bunch of very silly ideas.
What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – Jackass: Best And Last, specifically the “Trick people into thinking there is a deadly rattlesnake in the room, then lock them in and turn the lights out” sketch, which is quite frankly one of the funniest sequences ever put to film.
Book Of The Week – A Deadly Episode by Antony Horowitz. This is a fun whodunnit about a murder on a film set where it’s not clear if the murderer was targeting the actor or the character he was playing. I’m trying to read a bunch of whodunnits and mysteries at the moment as I’m taking my own whodunnit project, The Last One You’d Expect, in some exciting new directions. Watch this space!
Album Of The Week – The Ground Above by Beth Orton. This is a spiritual sequel to 2022’s Weather Alive, which was a big creative renaissance for Orton. It has a sort of Talk Talk/Blue Nile-esque wooziness to it, and I genuinely think her recent work is the best she’s done and trumps her 90s heyday.
Film Of The Week – Jackass: Best And Last, of course. This franchise has a direct line to my funny bone, I genuinely think nothing makes me laugh quite like it. The older they get, the more genuinely moving it becomes, as well.
That’s all for this week! Let me know what you thought, and if you enjoy the newsletter enough to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d really appreciate it. Take care of yourselves until next time,
Joz xx
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PPS Spent a lovely day on a boat. Hugh Jackman just got cast as Long John Silver, so I’m keeping things canon:
