Fosse/Verdon: Life is a Cabaret

April 9, 2019 8:36 PM - Season 1, Episode 1

The premiere of the series about the singular romantic and creative partnership between Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. (FX Channel)

AV Club - Fosse/Verdon kicks off with a show-stopping opener

TV Line Review: Big Stars Can't Jazz Up a By-the-Numbers Biopic

Variety - ‘Fosse/Verdon’ Boss on Exposing the ‘Grit and Grime’ of Bob Fosse in the Wake of #MeToo

Guardian - Fosse/Verdon review – showbiz miniseries is stylish but scatterbrained: The new FX series, which boasts magnetic lead performances from Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams, has highs and lows like its subjects’ partnership

posted by oh yeah! (5 comments total)

I don’t know much about Fosse - I’m aware that ‘All That Jazz’ is about him but never actually saw it from beginning to end, and knew Verdon from Damn Yankees & Cocoon but didn’t know they were married.

Anyway, I liked this first episode. I expect I’ll end up agreeing with the reviews that are saying they wished the series had been more centered on Verdon than on Fosse, and it will probably get tiresome to watch 8 hours of “miserable dude takes his misery out on the women around him”, but, it was a gorgeous looking first episode, and I’m looking forward to getting to see a good Sam Rockwell dance sequence.
posted by oh yeah! at 7:20 AM on April 10, 2019

Yeah, shows about dance really have a problem, the dance world is almost religious cult like in the obsession with getting on stage and well just dancing, as problematic as Fosse was he was far from a bad one and all the dancers mostly would know ahead the bad parts and would fight and climb over each other to get to be in one of his shows, meanness and cruelty aside, it would be totally worth it, no really get this straight, getting to do those steps, learning and doing those combinations, getting him to even slightly notice you and "make a correction" would be worth more than most can possibly imagine. Just lightly imagining while typing gives my whole body a slight tingle, it would be beyond real to have been in one of those shows.

Do give All That Jazz a watch if you haven't, it is a crazy problematic film that just barely touches the essence.

Hope this is good, very good leads and I hope a lot of dancers got some good work out of it.
posted by sammyo at 9:20 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I haven’t finished the first episode, but I stayed up through the beginning of the Sweet Charity “Big Spender” filming, and that was magnetic for me. I loved seeing Verdon and Fosse make the scene happen, and then I went and watched the original, and it’s even better. I think Michelle Williams’ performance is wonderful, and I’ve never seen All that Jazz either, but it’s on my list now.
posted by gladly at 9:38 AM on April 10, 2019

Okay, I've watched the whole thing, and Williams as Verdon is really astonishing. The behind-the-scenes choreography/staging of Cabaret leading to Gwen's arrival are exactly what I want from this show. And I love that they paid for the music.
posted by gladly at 7:23 PM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

I was weirdly certain that it would be Jessica Lange at the door, and then I remembered that just because this story is being told in a non-linear fashion doesn't mean that Jessica Lange is still thirty years old.
posted by tzikeh at 11:51 AM on April 12, 2019 [1 favorite]