THE Australian musical The Boy from Oz is another step closer to being performed on Broadway. Australian actor Hugh Jackman will play the role of Australian singer/songwriter Peter Allen in the United States production.
Australian television, stage and film producer Ben Gannon is in New York for a workshop of the production about Allen who married Liza Minnelli and made it big in the US.
Cynthia Kelly who works for Gannon says: "Until they have completed the workshop they won't actually know if they have a show to go with.
After the workshop, investors will be invited to come and have a look at it."
It is hoped that it will be staged in 2003. The hit musical which premiered in 1998 has long been proposed for a Broadway run but producers needed to find the right investors and theatre. Expatriate SA director Gale Edwards, who directed the original, is not involved in the new production.
It is being directed by American Philip McKinley.
Jackman, who replaces Todd McKenney as Allen, has a higher profile in the United States for roles in films such as Kate and Leopold and Swordfish. His stage career includes the Australian productions of Beauty and the Beast and Sunset Boulevard and the British production of Oklahoma!.
The producers had originally agreed McKenney would play the role on Broadway.
"Because things are really tough at the moment, to get investors interested they needed to get somebody in that field that they knew," says Kelly.
Adelaide audiences can see Todd McKenney in Singin' in the Rain at the Festival Theatre from Saturday.
