Edition: U.S. / Global


Published: January 15, 1999

The ghost of the man being celebrated -- blurred and fleeting but definitely there -- first shows up when the girl bursts onstage with a scream. That's the signal for a sequence lasting just 45 seconds, and it occurs halfway through the first act of ''Fosse,'' the hard-working but oddly affectless evening of dance by the choreographer Bob Fosse that opened last night at the Broadhurst Theater.

At the sound of that scream, which echoes not with terror but with irrepressible energy, a slender, elfin-faced fellow with a goatee shoots into view, sliding on his side like a runaway roller skate. The orchestra is playing Cole Porter's ''From This Moment On,'' as the couple perform an acrobatic, exuberant and exasperated mating dance, an ode to percolating hormones. You've just received, in darkest January, a quick infusion of springtime, and it's impossible not to grin.


That was what Fosse, at his best, continued to deliver throughout the 30-some succeeding years of his career: a sassy, confrontational and insistently sexual style that both baited and winked at his audiences. Even at his most ironic, the man behind ''Sweet Charity,'' ''Chicago'' and the film of ''Cabaret'' infused his work with impudent glee, a show-off's satisfaction in performing well. That sensibility is abundantly evident in the long-running revival of ''Chicago'' next door to the Broadhurst. Why, then, does it seem to be hidden for so much of ''Fosse''?

Fosse may have been cynical, but he wasn't cold. And the show that bears his name has a zero-at-the-bone quality that fends off emotional engagement even as you marvel at the contortions of the talented and industrious corps of close to 30 performers onstage. It's all technique and very little soul. This is especially confounding when you consider the pedigree of the team behind ''Fosse,'' a production of the American division of the now notorious Livent Inc.

There are, to start off, the two dancers whose association with Fosse is fabled: Gwen Verdon, his wife, collaborator and the star of his most memorable Broadway shows, from ''Damn Yankees'' to ''Sweet Charity'' and ''Chicago,'' who is the artistic adviser on this production; and Ann Reinking, the evening's co-director and co-choreographer, who was Fosse's muse and companion during the 1970's and the woman responsible for the lovingly reconceived Fosse choreography in the current ''Chicago.''

The choreographer of ''Fosse,'' Chet Walker, who was the dance captain on the 1986 revival of ''Sweet Charity,'' discussed the sort of project that this production would become with Fosse not long before his death in 1987. The show's director, Richard Maltby Jr., had shown a flair for personalizing and vivifying the commemorative revue with his staging of ''Ain't Misbehavin,' '' the popular Fats Waller musical. On hand as the nominal stars of ''Fosse'' are Valarie Pettiford and Jane Lanier, both of whom danced for the choreographer.

There was thus every reason to hope that ''Fosse'' would be steeped in intimacy and insights that could make converts even of determined non-fans. And heaven knows, at a moment in which the most kinetic presence in Broadway musicals tends to be the scenery, audiences are ravenous for the kind of distinctive, personality-filled dance style that Fosse, like Michael Bennett and Jerome Robbins, specialized in.

Yet the overall feeling of ''Fosse'' is both clinical and reverential: part uber master class, part shrine. The worshipful aspect is summoned in the evening's first image, a large projected photograph of Fosse, while seance-esque, astral music fills the air. The sets by Santo Loquasto (also the designer of the elegant, form-framing costumes) seem to have been assembled out of stardust and tinsel, suggesting a heaven in which eternity is one long curtain call.

The production's most emphatic priority, however, appears to be to make a case for Fosse as choreographer qua choreographer, to stand with the Robbinses and Martha Grahams of the world. This bookless three-act show, which has no identifying narrative or standard chronology, devotes much of its early segments to introducing the piquant, particular physical vocabulary that was Fosse's.

You know those elements even if you think you don't: the pigeon-toed stance, the cocked wrists, the twitching bums, the inwardly turned knees, accessorized with the essential white gloves and black bowlers. Here, caught in Andrew Bridge's funnels of light, dancers materialize from sepulchral darkness as pulsing incarnations of the letters of the Fosse alphabet. What follows is a study in how that alphabet can be reconfigured.