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Dear Rosie: just got the news, and was very disappointed to hear that you will not return as host of the Tony Awards in June. Scheduling problems, you say? Yeah, whatever. We both know the real reason. I'll bet that toward the end of last year, you looked around at the new musicals on Broadway and lost all enthusiasm for the theater. (You gave a standing ovation to Parade, but I know you were just being nice; and are people really buying tickets to terrible Footloose? I suspect a hoax.) While Off Broadway hummed with Paul Rudnick's gut-busting comedy The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and the poetic drama Wit, Broadway itself was really off. As of the new year, the only newsworthy non-revival was The Blue Room, with a wonderful performance (and oh, yes, nudity) by Nicole Kidman.
But wait a minute, Rosie! Surely you noticed that Broadway got a lot better on Jan. 14, when Fosse -- an impressionistic singing-and-dancing retrospective of the work of the late director-choreographer Bob Fosse -- kicked the season into high gear. I mean, with all due respect to Nicole, this has to be the season's sexiest, most provocative new show. You know who Bob Fosse was, right? Died at the age of 60 in 1987; enhanced the art of dance with his sexy, stripped-down style: the black bowler hats, the white gloves, cocked hips, tricky but linear movements. You might also know, because you're a fun-lovin' gal, that Fosse had a notable knack for showing off his dancers' derrieres to fabulous effect, but his greatness lay in his ability to speak volumes about a character with the twitch of a finger or, at times, with no movement at all (see the deadpan lineup of hookers singing ''Big Spender'' in Sweet Charity).
Fosse has a cast of 32 remarkably skilled and delightfully proportioned (between you and me, Rosie, they're hot) singer-dancers, including Broadway vet Scott Wise, the American Ballet Theatre's Desmond Richardson, and Fosse regulars Valarie Pettiford and Jane Lanier. All the big Fosse hits are here too: the ''Steam Heat'' number from The Pajama Game, ''Mein Herr'' from Cabaret, bits and pieces of Fosse's Oscar-winning movie All That Jazz -- as well as more obscure Fosse works unearthed from ancient TV shows, like the cowboy number from a 1968 Bob Hope special.
But let me be honest with you, Rosie. Some people might find Fosse a little frustrating. It has no discernible narrative, and the titular figure remains a bit distant. I know why: The show's artistic adviser, dancer-actress Gwen Verdon, was the choreographer's third wife; the show's conception is credited to Fosse protege Chet Walker, director Richard Maltby Jr., and choreographer Ann Reinking, who was Fosse's girlfriend for a time...during his marriage to Verdon. (Who says we all can't get along?) It's as if they knew Fosse so well that they forgot the rest of us might need a more thorough introduction. But in the end, I was seduced by Pettiford's fat-free rendition of ''Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries,'' by dance captain Brad Musgrove's turns from The Little Prince, by a touching re-creation of ''Mr. Bojangles,'' by Santo Loquasto's elegantly spare set, by Andrew Bridge's well-manicured fingers of light.
