Does Hugh Jackman think he's in Vegas?

This will probably get me into trouble, but here goes:

Hugh Jackman's act is more like Donny and Marie than Billy Crystal. More Wayne Newton than Elaine Stritch. More Vegas, yikes, than Broadway.

Does anyone care? Obviously not. "Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway" is a huge success and deservedly so. Lots of people -- middle-aged women, gay men, action-picture fans, Australians -- are clearly nuts about him. It is easy to understand why.

On the night I saw the charming, high-voltage show that's setting box-office and ticket-price records at the Broadhurst Theatre, I swear I saw little hearts shooting at him from eye sockets all over the house. Patti LuPone recently threatened to throw her underpants at him. Before his 10-week visit ends Jan. 1, I won't be surprised if someone does.

According to the official grosses from the week ending last Sunday, the average ticket price -- think of that, the average -- was $131.36. Only "The Book of Mormon," with its budget-busting average price of $154.90, is doing more historic business. The average for "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" is $109.40 -- and that includes the flying and the thrill that someone might fall on your head.

With Jackman, there is a very real possibility that he might instead sit in your lap. He works the room, you see, chatting up the customers -- I mean the theatergoers -- and flattering us and, implicitly, our taste in nightclub acts.

There is a big difference between a nightclub act and showcase theater. I don't know which one Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin will be doing when they open their two-person show at the Barrymore Theatre Monday. We know they are going to sing and talk, but publicity for the concert describes a narrative, a story that will connect the songs. We can hope.

These star-driven limited runs tend to pop up during the holidays. They make good gifts and take up vacant theaters before the winter chill descends. The Osmonds did one last year. Liza Minnelli played the Palace in 2008. Childhood photos and career highlights are generally blown up to share with strangers.

Compare those, however, with real one-person theater -- Crystal's "700 Sundays" from 2004 or "Elaine Stritch At Liberty," circa 2002.

Crystal's play, which he wrote himself, was not a glorified stand-up routine, a self-aggrandizing personal tribute or a greatest-hits rehash of real or imagined career triumphs. Yes, the piece was autobiographical, all about growing up with love, humor and loss in the Crystal bungalow in Long Beach.

Unlike other solos in the Vegas-ization of Broadway, however, this one wove comic routines almost incidentally into the plot, trusting that his family stories, complete with home movies, could make theatrical material.

Watching Stritch in her solo was like being invited to sit at a celebrity's table at an intimate dinner party that just happened to have a band in the pit.

The table was big enough to keep you invisible, small enough to guarantee access to every word, every nuance, in her expansive dinner chat. The chat was personal and confessional, but there was a script with content and shape.

As she described the process, it was "constructed" by New Yorker critic John Lahr and "reconstructed" by Stritch. She didn't flinch from the less delightful details of her life, but never made us feel manipulated.

"I didn't just want to do a club act where you sing your favorite songs and tell funny stories," she said around that time. She did sing her favorite songs, of course, and told funny stories -- and she has regularly done that since in cabaret clubs. In the theater, however, she wanted to do more.

I guess I had been hoping that Jackman would do more, too.

After all, anyone who saw him channel gay icon Peter Allen in his 2004 Tony-winning Broadway debut in "The Boy From Oz" knows Jackman as a dazzling singer, dancer and actor.

When raves came from San Francisco and Toronto about his one-man show, it was tempting to assume this would bring his charisma together with his genuine theater artistry in something more than a nightclub gig.

If his unabashed delight in his success were not so endearing, those and-then-I-played clips from his movies would be embarrassing. If he didn't so clearly thrive on performing, his gotta-dance persona could suggest one of those Bill Murray parodies of Vegas lounge singers.

And if he doesn't adore live performance as much as he appears to love -- I mean really love -- song-and-dance show biz, he is an even better actor than we knew.