Broadway Review: ‘The River’ Starring Hugh Jackman

The peculiar configuration of the stage at Circle in the Square creates a sense of close-encounter intimacy that is making Hugh Jackman’s fans very happy. So long as they silence their cell phones and don’t try to snap a photo (after a fervent and apparently necessary pre-curtain request made by the understudy), they deserve that bit of joy. Aside from the charismatic star’s intense performance as a lovesick fisherman who is given to poetic laments over the fish (and the woman) who slipped away from him, just about everything else about Jez Butterworth’s strange chamber piece, The River, is a downer. It takes a while for that bad news to sink in, because helmer Ian Rickson’s atmospheric staging of the play (a transfer from the Royal Court) creates an initially entrancing air of mystery. The open-sided setting designed by Ultz depicts the rustic cabin where a character designated The Man (Jackman) has taken a character designated The Woman (Cush Jumbo) for a romantic night of trout fishing.