Theater: Seamy and Steamy

The old razzle-dazzler has done it again--posthumously. Eleven years after he dropped dead of a heart attack at 60, Bob Fosse has two shows running side by side on Broadway. Fosse, a retrospective of dances from such musicals as Sweet Charity, Damn Yankees and The Pajama Game, opened last week right next door to the long-running revival of Chicago, the 1975 show that sealed Fosse's reputation as the most gifted musical-comedy director of his generation. Not bad for a self-doubting perfectionist who, even though he was the only person ever to win an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy in the same season (in 1973, for Cabaret, Pippin and Liza with a "Z"), never quite managed to shake off the nagging suspicion that he was merely a purveyor of glitzy trash.

Fosse may be glitzy, but it is also an inevitable hit, a galvanizing eruption of energy, panache and arrogantly sure-footed stagecraft that comes at a time when theatrical dance is in the doldrums. There hasn't been anything like it in years--10 years, to be exact, for it was in 1989 that Jerome Robbins put his ballet career on hold to direct Jerome Robbins' Broadway, a song-and-dance spectacular that theater buffs still recall with awe. The comparison is inescapable: Fosse was the only other Broadway choreographer with anything like Robbins' stylistic individuality and clarity of purpose, and he has had no successors.

To be sure, a few contemporary dance directors are doing compelling work. Rob Marshall's sardonic numbers in Cabaret are proof of that. But far more revealing was the failure of the latest revival of On the Town, which closed this week after just 65 performances. It says everything about the current state of dance on Broadway that one of the great dance shows of the '40s (and, ironically, Robbins' very first musical) should be sunk a half-century later by the lackluster choreography of Broadway neophyte Keith Young. No less illustrative of the dearth of fresh blood is the fact that Chicago's dances were staged not by a promising new face but by Ann Reinking, Fosse's former girlfriend, working "in the style of Bob Fosse."

Reinking also co-directed and co-choreographed Fosse, although she had plenty of help. Richard Maltby Jr., who created Ain't Misbehavin', was largely responsible for shaping the production and is billed as its director, while Chet Walker "re-created" the choreography. All three share credit for having "conceived" the show, which originated five years ago in a series of classes on Fosse's dance style taught by Walker and Gwen Verdon, Fosse's ex-wife and the original star of many of his most successful shows (Sweet Charity, Chicago). Exactly who did exactly what will surely be the subject of endless journalistic postmortems, but in the end it doesn't matter. Fosse is all Fosse. No one else could have dreamed up those waggling fingers and twitching shoulders--and no one else would have dared to impose so bleak a vision of human desire on the traditionally cheery world of Broadway dance.