NEW YORK, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Producers of the Broadway musical "The Boy from Oz" will cancel performances when star Hugh Jackman takes vacation, according to a spokesman of the show.
Rather than risk having members of the audience demand refunds, producers have decided to cancel 10 performances when Jackman takes his vacation early in the new year.
Performances will be canceled Feb. 1, Feb. 3-6, March 28, and March 30-April 2.
The cancellations are virtually unheard of on Broadway, where understudies regularly fill in for a show's stars even of the magnitude of Nathan Lane ("The Producers") and Bernadette Peters ("Annie") when they were ill and could not perform. However, Jackman, an Australian-born actor who plays the role of entertainer-songwriter Peter Allen in the biographical show, virtually carries the production.
The show opened last October to negative reviews although Jackman's performance was praised. It has been playing ever since to full houses at the Imperial Theater where two addition performances, Jan. 26 and March 22, have been scheduled to make up for canceled shows.
