Why Hugh Jackman’s New Theater Company Is Built Different

Hey everybody, welcome back. Ladies and gentlemen, my guest tonight is a Tony, Grammy, and Emmy award-winning actor you know from Les Miserables, The Greatest Showman, and as Wolverine in the X-Men series of instructional videos. He now stars in the new movie Song Sung Blue. For these occasions, I have created a persona. It's like a superhero of rock and roll. I mean, I got no cape or nothing. I got no mask, but I got a bolt. You know why I got a lightning bolt? Because they call me lightning. Oh yeah, lightning is a star. Please welcome back to The Late Show, Hugh Jackman. What a great... Thank you. So nice to see you. What a great way to end the year. With who is our final guest. This is, we call this the getaway date. This is the last show before a two-week break. When I came in, I was like, wow, everyone's really, really happy to see me. This is so lovely. No, they're just like, awesome. We're out of here. Let's go. Let's go. No, no. Listen, the holiday's coming up. Have you had a chance to prepare? Are you ready for the holidays? Because you've been on this press tour. I'm a famously last minute, like up all night rapping, but I actually am doing okay. Now, what about holiday traditions? Do you have any of those you particularly enjoy every year? When I grew up, I grew up in Australia, so it's hot. Yeah. I got that much. But it was for me every year, it's Elf, it's Home Alone. And weirdly, it's not a Christmas movie at all. But I first saw, I was given the VHS of Singing in the Rain on Christmas when I was 18. So I watched that every year because it's a perfect movie. Sure. It's as happy as Christmas. It's fantastic. Right. What about you? Oh, for me? Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, Lord of the Rings is always fun. That's always good. All three? Iron Giant. Iron Giant is a holiday for us. When the kids were little, I still enjoy that. It's a great one. I'm going to bring that one back. Thanks. I want to get to your new movie. But first, I want to ask you about something else you did this year. You started a company called Together. Yeah. A theater company. Yeah. It focuses on, quote, offering audiences a chance to experience theater in a fresh and engaging way. I'll bite. What's that mean? Well, first of all, we do it in a relatively small space. We did it at the Audible Theater down in Minetta Lane. So there's like 390 seats. It was nice and everyone was close. Not a lot of set. It's really focusing on the word, the play, and the actor. And I wanted to take away all the obstacles. So I really wanted to make it affordable for people. And do these become things available on Audible? Yeah. So you can listen to it. So we did a season last year. We're going to do another season. But a quarter of our tickets are free. Another quarter of them were 35 bucks. And so pretty much everyone got to see it if they wanted to. What inspired this? I'm just curious. That's great. You know, this, during the depression, this theater, which was built by Hammerstein, was taken over by the WPA. It was taken over. It was part of the federal works project. And you can see a play here for 25 cents. Wow. I want people to see theater. I grew up going to the theater. You know, it wasn't crazy expensive. So listen, I also wanted to make it, for me, easy to go and do. So we have two or three plays in rep. So it's not eight shows a week. It's four shows a week. And we do it. It's just nice and easy and relaxed. And I love it. So it'll be next March, April. If anyone's in town, come. If anyone is coming to New York, come and check it out. Excellent. We have to take a quick break. We're right back with more Hugh Jackman, everybody. Stick around.