Here’s a teaser for your family quiz this Christmas: what is the link between the hapless Frank Spencer from Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em of blessed memory, and mighty Marvel Comics superhero Wolverine?
The surprising answer is that the actors who inhabited both characters subsequently brought to life the legendary 19th-century impresario Phineas Taylor Barnum.
It’s more than 35 years since I saw Michael Crawford in Barnum on the London stage, and now it’s Hugh Jackman’s turn in The Greatest Showman (which opens across the UK on Boxing Day). Maybe the enduring memory of Crawford’s dynamic performance explains why, for me, Jackman doesn’t seem quite right in a part that, by all accounts, he has been desperate to play for years.
He’s a terrific actor, he can sing and dance wonderfully and he has a smile that could light up Broadway. But in my mind’s eye P. T. Barnum is a lithe, slippery fellow, more bantamweight than heavyweight and definitely not 200lb of Aussie beefcake.
