Fosse (musical)

Fosse
Original cast recording
Music	Various
Lyrics	Various
Basis	Revue of Bob Fosse's choreography
Productions	1999 Broadway 2001 West End
Awards	Tony Award for Best Musical Drama Desk Outstanding Revue

Fosse is a three-act musical revue showcasing the choreography of Bob Fosse. The musical was conceived by Richard Maltby Jr., Chet Walker, and Ann Reinking.

Concept and development

The first idea for Fosse was conceived by Chet Walker, who was in many of Bob Fosse's shows and served as dance captain. Walker began workshops in

After 21 previews, the original Broadway production opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on January 14, 1999, and closed on August 25, 2001, after 1,093 performances. The musical was directed by Richard Maltby Jr. and Ann Reinking, with original choreography by Bob Fosse. The co-choreographer was Ann Reinking, with choreography re-creations by Chet Walker and dance reconstructions by Lainie Sakakura and Brad Musgrove with Gwen Verdon as artistic advisor.^[2]

In 2002, Fosse, featuring Reinking and

The musical did not recreate the musical numbers as originally presented but instead had primarily black-and-white costumes (including the all-important hats), set against a simple setting.[5] Reviewer Ben Brantley of The New York Times describes the show: "The ghost of the man being celebrated -- blurred and fleeting but definitely there -- first shows up when the girl bursts onstage with a scream. That's the signal for a sequence lasting just 45 seconds, and it occurs halfway through the first act of Fosse, the hard-working but oddly affectless evening of dance by the choreographer Bob Fosse that opened last night at the Broadhurst Theater. At the sound of that scream, which echoes not with terror but with irrepressible energy, a slender, elfin-faced fellow with a goatee shoots into view, sliding on his side like a runaway roller skate. The orchestra is playing Cole Porter's "From This Moment On," as the couple perform an acrobatic, exuberant and exasperated mating dance, an ode to percolating hormones. You've just received, in darkest January, a quick infusion of springtime, and it's impossible not to grin. Those 45 seconds are famous. They had much to do with propelling Bob Fosse's career as a show-business-shaking choreographer and director of musical comedy. The vignette, here vibrantly performed by Andy Blankenbuehler and Lainie Sakakura, is a re-creation of the first sequence Fosse choreographed for film, a scene from the 1953 movie of Kiss Me, Kate, danced by Fosse and Carol Haney. It was a calling card, of sorts, announcing that an audacious new choreographic talent had arrived, and when you watch the film today, Fosse's pas de deux still seems to tear through the celluloid....There are only a few instances in which an infectious rush in the joy of performing gets past the footlights. You feel it in the athletic pride generated by Desmond Richardson's gymnastic Percussion 4 solo in the first act; in Scott Wise's satisfaction in turning tap steps into a personal stairway to heaven in Sing, Sing, Sing, and in, of all things, the salacious, watch-me delight that a young woman named Shannon Lewis draws from a 1970's artifact called I Gotcha, choreographed for Liza Minnelli's 1973 television special."^[6]

Musical numbers

Broadway opening night cast

Further reading

• Wasson, Sam, Fosse (scholarly biography), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013; 723 pages.

External links

• ​Fosse​ at the Internet Broadway Database
• Fosse at guidetomusicaltheatre.com