Preview: Fosse/Verdon

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Theater & Dance Washington Post

Lies, drugs, cheating and all that jazz: Nicole Fosse opens up about her famous Broadway parents

 

 

 

 

By Sarah L. Kaufman

April 5

Nicole Fosse, the daughter of obsessive, trailblazing director and choreographer Bob Fosse and legendary Broadway dancer Gwen Verdon, grew up in rehearsal studios and smoke-filled editing rooms. Within those walls, she watched her famous parents reinvent the entertainment industry while their personal lives fell to pieces.

 

As a producer and creative consultant on the new FX series “Fosse/Verdon,” which stars Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams, Nicole Fosse has had to go through it all over again: the lies, lovers, drugs, breakdowns and the inexorable onrush of death.

“If I didn’t have trouble with some of the moments, either there’s something wrong with me or something wrong with the piece,” Fosse, 56, says of the series, which premieres April 9.

 

Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon turned putting on a show into an art, a neurosis and a way of life. Nothing got in their way as they created a new theatrical style out of smoke, shadows and sexy, fine-tuned dancing, in such Broadway musicals as “Sweet Charity,” “Pippin” and “Chicago,” and the films “Cabaret” and the semi-autobiographical “All That Jazz.”

 

 

Nothing stopped them, not Fosse’s pill habit, depression or heart attacks. Not his revolving bedroom door or the collapse of their marriage. (They separated but never divorced, and continued working together.) Artistic partners from the 1950s through the 1980s (Fosse died in 1987, Verdon in 2000), they threw boozy parties, had fascinating friends and cherished their bright, spunky daughter. But candor wasn’t their strength.

 

“There was so much intellect and humor and love and joy that sometimes it made it more difficult to identify the struggle,” Fosse said by phone from New York. But she has realized this about her childhood: “There was a complete lack of clarity.”

A creative team from the “Hamilton” family came together to address that, to shine a spotlight, over eight episodes, on the couple’s messy, unshakable drive and their frailties. The group includes director Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda as one of the executive producers and choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, whom Nicole Fosse met when he was dancing in “Fosse,” a 1999 Broadway tribute show. That team, Fosse says, is what clinched her participation in the series; when she first saw “Hamilton,” she felt a kinship.

 

[‘Hamilton’ choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler delivers a revolution that rocks]

“I realized the work that happened on that stage was changing Broadway forever and what is possible on a stage, and not just stylistically,” she says. “It created almost a new genre in how we approach storytelling. I feel like my parents did that in their generation.”

 

Fosse, who danced and acted in her father’s films and helped her mother on “Fosse,” directs an organization called the Verdon Fosse Legacy, which protects and oversees her parents’ creations. There’s not a lot she doesn’t know about them, but one scene in “Fosse/Verdon,” set before she was born, gave her insight into her mother’s psyche, and what fueled some of her efforts to dodge the truth.

 

It occurs in the 1953 Cole Porter musical “Can-Can,” on Broadway, a role that took the young, ambitious Verdon away from the baby son she’d had with her first husband, a reporter. On opening night, her bawdy, sensual heat and supreme dance finesse stopped the show. The audience erupted, and Verdon, who was changing for her next number, was dragged from her dressing room in a towel to acknowledge the ovation.

 

With her stunned expression turning to gradual comprehension, Williams plays it perfectly, Fosse says.

“Watching Michelle cycle through and break through and then back off of and lean into all the different emotions that she did, I really understood much more clearly a dividing line in my mother’s life that happened,” Fosse says.

 

Sam Rockwell as Bob Fosse and Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdon in FX's "Fosse/Verdon." (Craig Blankenhorn/FX)

“Prior to that she was a really hard-working, sweaty hoofer, just trying to get food on the table to feed herself and her kid and pay her rent. And her life changed for good and bad after that moment.”

Verdon was suddenly a star, recognized on the streets of New York, and with that came the pressure to perform offstage, too. In public, even for a trip to the deli for bagels, she wore makeup and heels, always “Gwen Verdon,” Fosse recalls, her voice putting the name quotes. To escape that continuous pressure, sometimes her mother would rely on a little deception, with a different kind of performance.

 

Entire article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/lies-drugs-cheating-and-all-that-jazz-nicole-fosse-opens-up-about-her-famous-broadway-parents/2019/04/04/e2930838-54f0-11e9-a047-748657a0a9d1_story.html?utm_term=.ffa5aaadcdd1

Edited April 7, 2019 by WilliamM