The great sounds of The Greatest Showman
I love watching Hugh Jackman on the screen and I am glad that my next opportunity will be in the musical The Greatest Showman. He is the only actor I know who can sing and dance in one picture and then turn around and be a superhero in his next. Clint Eastwood is also an action hero who is very musical but he is on a different level. He could not hack singing, he tried in Paint Your Wagon, so he writes music and plays the piano instead.
So, if you are thinking of a typical song and dance man but one with action chops, then Jackman, who launched his career as Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, is your guy. And I must say that he is so good at it, you can totally forget that he was dying and had adamantine claws in Logan, from only a year ago. Note that he was Jean Valjean in Les Misérables before that. This is what Jackman is in The Greatest Showman, a song-and-dance man. This is an original musical based on the life of P.T. Barnum. This was the innovative impressario behind the Barnum Museum and the greatest circus troupe of all time. Barnum also invented the big top where the circus is now usually held. That is why he is referred to as the greatest showman, he created the “Greatest Show on Earth.”
Of course, this movie is not really a true biography of Barnum. You can read up on that or wait for somebody to do a TV series like they did for the owner of the Selfridge store in London. It is a summarized, somewhat fictionalized account. But who cares, the news from screenings says that everybody who watched came out of the theater happy, inspired and with the best proof there is of a successful musical, singing the songs.
A lot of factors brought about that result. One is that The Greatest Showman has an incredible cast. Aside from Jackman, you have awardwinning actress Michelle Williams, last seen in All The Money in the World as the wife, Charity Barnum; and Rebecca Ferguson of TV’s The White Queen as the Swedish nightingale Jenny Lind, with the voice of the Adam Levine The Voice protégé Loren Allred. There are also theater actress Keala Settle as the bearded lady in Barnum’s live exhibit; the Disney channel’s Zendaya soaring through the air as a trapeze artist and falling in love with Zac Efron. Yes, after many years away from his High School Musical series, heartthrob Efron is singing and dancing and falling in love again as the playwright Philip Carlyle. Tasked with coming up with the music for The Greatest Showman is the award-winning tandem of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. As far as music is concerned, these guys are now the toasts of Broadway and Hollywood. They did the songs for the Tony-winning Dear Evan Hansen. Their City of Stars from La La Land won the Academy Award, plus a few others for Best Song. As of this writing, they already have a Golden Globe for This Is Me that was performed by Keala in The Greatest Showman.
Pasek and Paul’s writing reached new heights in The Greatest Showman. The way they were able to use a very commercial pop style in a musical set in the fabled Gilded Age in America is most remarkable. Every song is a potential hit and they are all impressive right from the first listen. You know how it is waiting for new songs to grow on you? Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. That is not the case with The Greatest Showman. I listened sans visuals and I loved them all.
It is easy to see why This Is Me won the Globe. It is a song about being accepted for who one really is and Settle is one fantastic performer. But my bet for the long run is the love song Rewrite The Stars by Efron and Zenda- ya. This is one duet you will soon be hearing everywhere. I can also say the same for Never Enough, especially for those who love listening to divas singing high and loud in power ballads.
The Greatest Showman opens on Jan. 31. I am sure that after watching, I will love the music more.