The Boy from Oz [Original Broadway Cast]

1	The Boy from Oz, musical play~The Lives of Me / Hugh Jackman 4:05
2	The Boy from Oz, musical play~When I Get My Name in Lights 2:24
3	The Boy from Oz, musical play~When I Get My Name in Lights (Reprise) / Hugh Jackman 0:47
4	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Love Crazy / Hugh Jackman 2:19
5	The Boy from Oz, musical play~All I Wanted Was the Dream / Isabel Keating 3:06
6	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Only an Older Woman / Isabel Keating 2:33
7	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Best That You Can Do / Stephanie J. Block 1:54
8	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Don't Wish Too Hard / Isabel Keating 1:41
9	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Come Save Me / Stephanie J. Block 2:01
10	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Continental American / Pamela Jordan 2:25
11	The Boy from Oz, musical play~She Loves to Hear the Music / Stephanie J. Block 3:55
12	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Quiet Please, There's a Lady on Stage / Isabel Keating 4:12
13	The Boy from Oz, musical play~I'd Rather Leave While I'm in Love / Stephanie J. Block 2:38
14	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Not the Boy Next Door / Tari Kelly 2:23
15	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Bi-Coastal / Tari Kelly 2:51
16	The Boy from Oz, musical play~If You Were Wondering / Jarrod Emick 1:49
17	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Everything Old is New Again / Hugh Jackman 3:00
18	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Everything Old is New Again (Reprise) / Jarrod Emick 1:07
19	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Love Don't Need a Reason / Jarrod Emick 2:28
20	The Boy from Oz, musical play~I Honestly Love You / Jarrod Emick 2:47
21	The Boy from Oz, musical play~You and Me / Stephanie J. Block 2:36
22	The Boy from Oz, musical play~I Still Call Australia Home / Tari Kelly 2:38
23	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Don't Cry Out Loud / Beth Fowler 2:17
24	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Once Before I Go / Hugh Jackman 3:42
25	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Finale: I Go to Rio / Hugh Jackman 3:52
26	The Boy from Oz, musical play~Tenterfield Saddler (bonus track) / Hugh Jackman Bonus Track 3:24

Barnes & Noble

Australia’s favorite son, the flamboyant performer Peter Allen, may have had his highest profile in the late '70s, but his legacy lives on in the many quality songs his name is attached to as composer, including “ I Honestly Love You,” “I Go to Rio,” “Everything Old Is New Again,” “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” and “I’d Rather Leave when I’m in Love.” Each of those songs, plus plenty of other Allen gems, is heard on the highly entertaining cast album of The Boy from Oz, featuring Hugh Jackman as Allen. The show’s featured songs echo Allen’s career and personal life, including a short-lived marriage to Liza Minnelli, presenting a modern showbiz tale of the mercurial nature of fame and romance. With the legendary producer Phil Ramone behind the boards, this cast album has a snap, as well as a poignancy, that should resonate with listeners who remember Allen, as well as those who are coming to his music for the first time. William Pearl

All Music Guide

It was entirely appropriate that, on October 16, 2003, The Boy from Oz became the first Australian musical to reach Broadway. The show, which played for two years in Sydney after opening there in 1998, tells the life story of Peter Allen, the Australian-born singer/songwriter who achieved his greatest fame in New York, even starring in his own Broadway musical, Legs Diamond, in 1988. That show opened to disastrous reviews, but the notices for The Boy from Oz were more favorable, particularly with regard to the star, Hugh Jackman, the Australian film actor who had also previously performed musicals in Australia and London. Critics had less use for the rest of the show, however. Allen's biography has certain advantages and disadvantages as a stage vehicle. It is certainly full of dramatic event, as the singer rises from humble beginnings to television success in Australia, then is taken under the wing of Judy Garland and marries her daughter, Liza Minnelli, later developing a cabaret career in the U.S. that culminates in performances at Radio City Music Hall, before dying of AIDS. But for a general audience likely to know Allen, if at all, only through the songs he wrote, among them the Olivia Newton-John hit "I Honestly Love You," he is in danger of being overshadowed by his better-known mother-in-law and wife. And that's where the charismatic Jackman comes in, balancing out that equation with his performing verve. On record, of course, one gets only the songs, not the story. So, the original Broadway cast album of The Boy from Oz is essentially a Peter Allen greatest-hits collection, as sung by Jackman, with appearances by Isabel Keating as Garland, and Stephanie J. Block as Minnelli. Thankfully, Allen's music, which has been shoe-horned into the plot in the same way that ABBA's was in Mamma Mia!, works much better than ABBA's does; some of it was actually written as Broadway show music, and most of the rest might as well have been. It's better just to forget that Judy Garland died before the songs Keating is given to sing were even written, and that Minnelli never sang her songs here, either. Both Keating and Block do credible jobs without resorting to parody. But it's Jackman who is the real focus, and he performs well. Ironically, some of Allen's best-known songs have been given to others: Jarrod Emick, as Allen's boyfriend, sings "I Honestly Love You" (from beyond the grave, as it happens, but let's just forget that, too), and Beth Fowler, as his mother, sings "Don't Cry Out Loud." But Jackman is equally convincing on the up-tempo songs such as "I Go to Rio," and the ballads he does get to perform. The album deletes one song heard on-stage, "Sure Thing Baby," and adds a "bonus track" not actually performed in the show: the autobiographical "Tenterfield Saddler." Since the latter is one of Allen's best songs, and certainly his most personal, it's hard to complain about that. It's only too bad no place was found for the song in the production. William Ruhlmann