DAVID BIANCULLI

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NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
 
 
 
THE GREATEST SHOWMAN
September 8, 2018  | By David Bianculli

HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET

 

This 2017 musical biography returns Hugh Jackman to the musical form, the genre from which he first burst forth, in a revival of Oklahoma!, before becoming a movie star and a Wolverine. Here, he plays ringmaster and circus entrepreneur P.T. Barnum, whose vision of popular entertainment, under the same big tent, included everything from tigers and elephants to opera singers and bearded ladies. This very colorful and loose biography is co-written by Jenny Bicks, creator of The Big C and a writer-producer on Sex and the City, and Bill Condon, who wrote the screenplay adaptations for both Chicago and Dreamgirls. Michelle Williams plays Barnum’s wife, Charity; Rebecca Ferguson plays opera singer Jenny Lind (with Lind’s singing voice provided by a former Voice contestant, Loren Allred); Zac Efron plays Barnum’s protégé, Phillip Carlyle; Zendaya plays acrobat Anne Wheeler; and Keala Settle portrays bearded lady Lettie Lutz (pictured), and gets to sing what has emerged as this movie’s famous anthem, “This Is Me.”

 
 
 
 
 
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