Not The Boy Next Door
Hugh Jackman shaking his money maker
So this time around I dreamed of dancing with Hugh Jackman. We were both younger (I’m 18 months older than him), around the age when he won a Tony for The Boy From Oz.
This song was a centerpiece of the hit Australian musical1 that told the story of icon Peter Allen’s life. The book was originally written by Australian playwright Nick Enright2, who sadly died 6 months before the show opened on Broadway. Martin Sherman did the revisions for the Broadway run3, which hinged on Jackman saying yes.
This track was the number every night where Jackman would pull one lucky lady out of the audience to perform with him. See, I did tie it to my dream. Here’s the version of it from the Tony Awards in 2004.4
Allen wrote the song with Dean Pitchford.5 It was the title track and first single of his second-last album. He had always been compared to Barry Manilow so he signed with Manilow’s album Arista in the hopes that they knew how to promote him. This was his first album with them. Sadly it didn’t perform as he had hoped.
Here’s Peter Allen’s performing at the late, much missed Ontario Place Forum in 1983. The sound quality is really bad but it gives a real good sense of his performance style. You can see how well Jackman captured him.
And I can even sort of tie it back to yesterday’s dream. Allen wrote a song called Tenterfield Saddler about his life, starting with growing up in Australia and on to his life in the US. It’s become an iconic song in Australia.6 I’m pretty sure Tim Freedman performed it before the Melbourne Cup one year although the internet is silent on it. There is a clip on YouTube of him talking about the song with a clip of him performing part of it. He has played it on occasion in his solo shows.
Aussie men, right?
Enjoy your song of the day!
It ran in various theatres across Australia for 2 years, making a star of the original Peter Allen actor, Todd McKenney.
I’ve seen 3 of his plays - Daylight Saving in a Toronto production by Tarragon Theatre in 1998, Cloudstreet at BAM in NY 3 weeks after 9/11, and A Man With Five Children in it’s original Sydney production in 2002. There’s no other playwright whose works I have attended in 3 different countries - not even Shakespeare (I’ve only seen him in Canada and Oz).
By all accounts was vastly inferior to Enright’s version but Enright had the luxury of the Australian audiences knowing who Allen was, which was not a given with American audiences.
Yes, Peter Allen famously entered his Radio City Music Hall shows on a camel.
He was writing the Footloose screenplay around the same time and was filming when this album was released.
Although the song of his that’s considered an true Aussie classic is I Still Call Australia Home.