Fosse/Verdon

Williams conveys Verdon’s star quality without letting it obscure her steely survivor’s core. In Mad Men terms, the character is Joan (an underestimated single mom), Betty (a betrayed wife rebuilding her life) and Peggy (a woman who’s just as talented and driven as any man in her field) in one.

Seeing them portrayed on the small screen by two major movie stars, Michelle Williams and Sam Rockwell, feels like a stunt at first. But Williams especially makes her vulnerable, defiant Verdon come alive--a gladiator in a little black leotard. [5/12 Apr 2019, p.91]

It’s all sumptuously produced but heavy spirited, and perhaps too immersive for its own good. It proves the miniseries’ Broadway-and-Hollywood-geek bona fides, but as it powers through the postwar era, it settles into a boozy, smoky, prestige cable groove that’s like a glitzier, slower, less thematically on-point cousin of Mad Men.

Fosse/Verdon has some things going for it that held my interest even when the basic plot didn't. The scenes in which the two break out the dance steps for their productions, are fascinating, even if—maybe especially if—you don't give a tinker's dam about scissor kicks or jazz hands.

The series is certainly competent, one collaboration that changed the face of American theater telling the story of another. But you’re looking for more of a Fosse shoulder roll, the extra tap in the time step, the unexpected contortion in the jazz number--the kinds of quirks that made Fosse and Verdon singular and unique. Their relationship was anything but by the book, and you wish this dramatization wasn’t afraid to go a little more off-script.

Williams never makes a wrong step, but, sadly, the same can’t be said for the writing and direction.

Despite the time jumps, much of Fosse/Verdon feels sluggish and nonessential. Rockwell is fine as Fosse, but Fosse himself is a bore. ... More Verdon, less Fosse please.

If this is how television can stage a musical show, we are gonna need more of this, let Rockwell and Williams be the shining example. Fosse/Verdon Thomas Kail and Steven Levenson, the creators, actually wants to tell this story. The zest keeps the series alive and us engaged in their intertwining of multiple parallel running plots, all synced in one big provocative musical number. Yes, provocative is the word I'd use. If watching Sam Rockwell play Bob Fosse arrogantly and Michelle Williams cutting him sharply, won't amp up you to the brisk of the seat, I don't know what will. Simply, put it this way, it is just good television. As mentioned, the non linearity is the best asset to the series. Not only for the subsequent punches that it prepares for, in each chapter but the magnitude of the change in the priority; hater gets to hate and lovers, the reason to run for the autographs. And this is one of the primary reason why, the chapters keep increasing the stakes and as a result the adaptation, of Sam Wasson's book Fosse, keeps getting better. Surprisingly, the singularity of the character remain resonant. With this much plot being choked up, in the first glance, the structure looks like some tangled earphones- 21st century-, the command of these creators over these characters is impeccably inspiring. And the rest of the work is done by the performance of the cast. Signing big, big names like Rockwell and Williams, the check pays off. The chemistry is better off left alone, and no matter how good your writing is, the performance is the only way that could have justified their real equation. Biting and kicking each other, from the first act, the choreographer is ignored by the dancer and the dancer is never respect in front of choreographer's eyes. Yet, Williams and Rockwell dances so elegantly. It is not the passionate attraction that makes us believes in their reasons for being together, it is something beyond the show business that they crave for or the social life that bars them to behave in a specific way or the ethical reasons of bearing each other in one room, it should have been Rockwell/Williams and not Fosse/Verdon.