HUGH JACKMAN made a stunning return to Broadway with a mesmerizing performance in award-winning playwright Jez Butterworth’s new drama “The River.”

    Set in a remote cabin, the three-person play that opened at the Circle in the Square Theater on Sunday for a limited run won praise for the “Wolverine” actor’s portrayal of an outdoorsy man on a romantic night fishing trip.

    “Jackman is catch of the day in ‘The River,’ said the New York Daily News, adding that his performance is “manly, measured and speckled with melancholy.”

    The New York Times lauded the actor for conveying an impression of self-contained silence and said he “ascends with assurance to a new level as a stage actor.”

    Jackman, 46, is no stranger to Broadway and won a Tony award in 2004 for “The Boy From Oz.” But unlike that rousing musical based on the life of singer/songwriter Peter Allen or his Oscar-nominated role in the film “Les Miserables,” “The River,” is an intense, mystical one-act play, and Jackman is the center of it.

    While it found it intriguing, USA Today described the play as “ultimately disappointing,” which the trade journal Variety echoed. “Aside from the charismatic star’s intense performance as a lovesick fisherman who is given to poetic laments over the fish (and the woman) who slipped away from him, just about everything else about Jez Butterworth’s strange chamber piece, ‘The River,’ is a downer,” it said. (SD-Agencies)