Hugh Jackman is drawing attention on Broadway this week for his current play, “The River” – and for what might come next.
At Wednesday night’s performance of “The River,” Mr. Jackman caused a stir in the audience when he cut a finger while slicing a lemon onstage and – lacking the healing powers of his movie character Wolverine – was visibly bleeding for the next hour or so.
Turns out it wasn’t the first mishap. Two weeks earlier, while rehearsing the scene where his character prepares a fish for dinner, Mr. Jackman cut a finger and required five stitches, a representative for the actor said Thursday.
As for the latest accident, emergency medical technicians came to the Circle in the Square theater but concluded no stitches were needed. Mr. Jackman is fine and will go on in Thursday night’s performance of the show, said his representative, Michele Schweitzer.
“I said to him last night ‘Let’s try to get through “The River” run with at least 7.5 fingers intact!’ ” Ms. Schweitzer wrote by email.
Mr. Jackman has been playing to sold-out audiences at Circle in the Square, according to box-office data released Monday. Indeed, his popularity is such that he has drawn the interest of the producers of the next show coming to Circle in the Square, next spring’s musical “Fun Home.”
The actor told The Times recently that he would someday love to play the role of the closeted gay father in “Fun Home,” a coming-of-age story about the lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel. “Fun Home” ran last winter at Off Broadway’s Public Theater, where the father was played by the Tony Award winner Michael Cerveris, whom Mr. Jackman also praised. “It’s an astonishing part,” Mr. Jackman added about the character.
Mr. Cerveris will reprise his performance as the father when “Fun Home” moves to Broadway this spring, one of the show’s lead producers, Kristin Caskey, confirmed Thursday. (The rest of the cast will be announced later.) But if Mr. Cerveris ever chooses to leave the show Ms. Caskey said she knows whom she would call.
“We would love to see him in ‘Fun Home’ some day,” she said on Thursday about Mr. Jackman. “For now, two fabulous opening night tickets await.”
An earlier version of this post misstated the action Mr. Jackman was performing when he cut his finger Wednesday night. He was slicing a lemon, not gutting a trout.