{"id":233234,"date":"2026-05-15T22:31:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T22:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/233234\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T22:31:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T22:31:23","slug":"new-born-review-let-hugh-jackman-tell-you-a-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/233234\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018New Born\u2019 Review: Let Hugh Jackman Tell You a Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among the canniest aspects of \u201cNew Born<\/a>,\u201d a program of three monologues by the British playwright Ella Hickson, is that it begins with a kind of meditation on parasocial relationships: our insatiable hunger for gossip about celebrities; our fantasies of becoming close, in real life, to the famous people we watch on our myriad screens.<\/p>\n

In theater, of course, stars\u2019 tantalizing presence gets people through the door \u2014 certainly this spring on Broadway, but downtown, too, at the Minetta Lane Theater, where Hugh Jackman is giving one of the deftest, most extraordinary performances in New York. And, in the 399-seat space, one of the most intimate.<\/p>\n

Jackman\u2019s piece, \u201cDeadwood,\u201d comes last in the show\u2019s lineup, so it is shrewd of the director, Ian Rickson, to ensure we glimpse him right at the top, when all three actors briefly enter together. Then Sepideh Moafi \u2014 one of several<\/a> stars from the buzzy HBO Max drama \u201cThe Pitt<\/a>\u201d now appearing on Manhattan stages \u2014 performs the opening monologue, \u201cLight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her unnamed character is a married artist, reasonably happy at home and at work, though having a toddler means she hasn\u2019t \u201cslept a whole night in nearly two years.\u201d For relaxation, she scrolls her phone for celebrity news. Out one night, by chance she meets a famous singer who takes a liking to her, and the glow of that attention \u2014 the mutual near-obsession they develop \u2014 shifts everything.<\/p>\n

Moafi, alas, never goes deeper than the surface of Hickson\u2019s text, and her artist seems awfully fresh and vital for a character so sleep deprived. It\u2019s a perfectly neat performance, but barely realized; watching it is like being read to by someone who has the words memorized.<\/p>\n

So it is thrilling when Marianna Gailus \u2014 who was Andrew Scott\u2019s understudy in the solo \u201cVanya<\/a>\u201d Off Broadway last year \u2014 dives so fully into the second monologue that we are instantly in olden-times Wyoming. In \u201cRattle,\u201d Gailus plays Martha, a young woman with a prickly rebel spirit who works at an inn. When her bloodied menstrual rag falls out, onto the floor of the inn\u2019s saloon, she will not be shamed by some rough-mannered cowboy into picking it up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have, if I could have found a reason to do it that wasn\u2019t propriety,\u201d she says, to us.<\/p>\n

Funny, vulnerable, tonally protean, Gailus\u2019s interpretation is the kind that makes you urge people to see this actor now, while she is still unknown. The monologue loses its tautness halfway through, when Hickson overloads it with a plotline about a lost Black child amid rumblings of a Klan presence. The tale acquires a whiff of the white savior trope then, and its ending is too tidy. Gailus, though, is a stunner of a storyteller.<\/p>\n

Produced by Audible Theater and Together \u2014 Jackman\u2019s partnership with the producer Sonia Friedman \u2014 the program finishes with \u201cDeadwood,\u201d the longest, most psychologically intricate and best written of the monologues. The title has multiple meanings, one of them sexual.<\/p>\n

In a T-shirt that shows off his superhero biceps, Jackman plays a tree surgeon who lucks into blissful, sunlit love with a woman named Katie. The tall, complex wooden ladder at the center of the set plays Katie\u2019s cherished old tree. (Costumes are by Kaye Voyce. The lighting, exquisite, is by Japhy Weideman. The set is by Brett J. Banakis and Christine Jones.)<\/p>\n

Jackman climbs high up that ladder and leans way back, hanging on with his left hand, gesturing with his right. All the while he chats to us, because the story he has to tell \u2014 about devotion and desire, family and fracture \u2014 needs, somehow, our understanding. Or, rather, the tree surgeon does. That\u2019s how Jackman plays him, sifting through his thoughts with a disarming uptalk that suggests this guy wants to make sure we\u2019re following him.<\/p>\n

Adroitly attuned to the audience upstairs and down, Jackman is utterly in the room with us. Charmingly relatable and lightly comical, his performance is at times emotionally naked \u2014 especially after the tree surgeon leaves Katie because his attraction to her has left him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t live the rest of your life against your body, against your nature,\u201d he tells us. \u201cI didn\u2019t stop loving her, incidentally, ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tears fall helplessly from the tree surgeon\u2019s eyes. The sight of it stabs at our hearts.<\/p>\n

And Jackman, in his element, has us rapt.<\/p>\n

New Born<\/p>\n

Through June 8 at Minetta Lane Theater, Manhattan; audiblexminetta.com<\/a>. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Among the canniest aspects of \u201cNew Born,\u201d a program of three monologues by the British playwright Ella Hickson,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[91502,91496,91500,91495,85518,82204,85517,91501,82199,91498,91497,9,24,55,54,56,82203,91499,905,85499,91503],"class_list":["post-233234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-audible-com","tag-ella","tag-gailus","tag-hickson","tag-hugh","tag-ian","tag-jackman","tag-marianna","tag-minetta-lane-theater","tag-moafi","tag-new-born-play","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-rickson","tag-sepideh","tag-theater","tag-theater-off-broadway","tag-together-theater-co"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}