Theater Review: Bob Fosse's Dancin'

                         "Bob Fosse's Dancin'"

I confess at the outset that I’m no kind of dancer, so if you’re looking for an intelligent, cogent comment on “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’”, you’d better look elsewhere.

But I was definitely enchanted by what I saw at the Old Globe opening last night: Twenty dancers, who took me out of my world and into another entirely, doing fascinating things, some of which I would call impossible if I weren’t sitting there, watching them do it.

Fosse collected nine Tonys in his well-known career as choreographer and director of dance shows. This show gives us a taste of the provocative steps, percussive music and unusual props that he used.

The first half of the show goes back to the beginning of what I’ll call the Bob Fosse style, dominated by percussion and a particularly intricate tap dance style that features small groups of dancers doing different things onstage at the same time.

It’s this section that took me out of San Diego to someplace I’d never been  –and frankly, I didn’t want to return.

But the second half did rather make me do that, by dragging in politics and other unpleasantries I was hoping to continue to escape.

A rather industrial look does it, with the four movable staircases shoved here and there so that dancers can be placed wherever seems best.

Let’s see, we’ve got an amusing therapist trying to “fix” the girls, who don’t seem interested in being fixed. And politics of the 1940s, wherein it is noted that “America loves black culture but does not love black people.”

Martin Luther King is mentioned, and Susan B. Anthony. Fosse is interviewed on TV, telling us that “working is my way of staying alive.”

A dancer sings “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries,” and don’t we all  wish that were true. But the final message is this: Remember that you ARE the universe and the universe is you.

The technical and artistic aspects of the show are every bit as astonishing as the dancing. Robert Brill’s malleable (and movable) set design and Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung’s amazing costumes add a great deal to the look of the show. Lighting and sound (by David Grill and Peter Hylenski, respectively), and Jim Abbott’s orchestrations add a great deal as well. And Wayne Cilantro’s direction and musical staging are phenomenal. 

Bob Fosse changed dance forever. Don’t you forget it, and don’t miss this show.

The details

“Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” plays through May 29, 2022 at The Old Globe’s Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage.

Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m.

Tickets: www.TheOldGlobe.org or (619) 234-5623.