PLAY IT AGAIN

"Hugh Jackman LIVE" and "Beckett Briefs."

- HELEN SHAW

In “Hugh Jackman LIVE, from New York with Love,” the Oscar-nominated, multiple Tony Award-winning Marvel mega-super-über-ultrastar can't seem to get over the fact that he has his own show at Radio City Music Hall. “Look at us, Gussy!” he called to a childhood friend in the audience the night I saw it. “Who would have thought it?” At some point, as Jackman performs twenty-four shows there in the next ten months, his surprise may fade. Yet this is a key aspect of Jackman's charisma: a kind of sweet humility that constantly refreshes itself. Though the actor has starred in five Broadway productions, shredded box-office records as the X-Men's vein-popping Wolverine, performed a whole other autobiographical retrospective (“Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway,” in 2011), and even hosted four Tony ceremonies at Radio City, his happy-to-be-here, gee-willikers excitement somehow remains intact. “I’ll never forget this,” he told a Saturday crowd, a little catch in his voice.

Jackman, his beard now striped a distinguished gray, wears a slim three-piece suit, tie-less, as if he's still playing a huckster in “The Music Man,” or maybe a faith healer with great microphone skills. In the course of an energetic hour and forty-five minutes, he, his orchestra, four backup singers, and four dancers offer a tour of his Hollywood and Broadway career. The set list includes several of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's sugary anthems from “The Greatest Showman”; a good chunk of the dazzling Australian entertainer Peter Allen's œuvre, which Jackman interpreted in “The Boy from Oz,” earning a Tony; and, during a sequence in which his twanging timbre sounds most at home, a few Neil Diamond hits. (He's recently finished shooting a role as a real-life Diamond impersonator, in a film called “Song Sung Blue.”)