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[0:00] Aaron Albano: You're listening to Fosse/Verdon from The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm Aaron Albano.

[0:12] Mo Brady: And I'm Mo Brady. Welcome listeners to our miniseries, recapping episodes of FX's Emmy Award-winning limited series Fosse/Verdon. In the show, we see an inside look into two characters as they grapple with the concept of power, the meaning of love, and the value of entertainment in art. We're going back episode by episode to see how this love letter to vintage Broadway tells us greater truths about the industry. So let's dive in and talk about Episode 6, All I Care About Is Love. Aaron, give us the stats.

[0:49] Aaron Albano: All I Care About Is Love premiered on May 14, 2019. It was written by Ike Holter and directed by Minkie Spiro. In this episode, we step into the rehearsal room of the original production of Chicago and are treated to a recreation of the famed All That Jazz. This iconic number, originally choreographed by Bob Fosse, was reconstructed by Valarie Pettiford. Performing in the cast of Chicago are Bianca Marroquin as Chita Rivera as Velma, Tony nominee Robyn Hurder.

[1:16] Mo Brady: Feels good to say, doesn't it?

[1:20] Aaron Albano: Along with Bahiyah Hibah, Fred Odgaard, Michael Williams, Alex Wong, J.C. Schuster, Morgan Marcell, and Heather Lang. Only two featured songs appear in this episode, both of which are from Kander and Ebb's Chicago. The previously mentioned All That Jazz, sung by Bianca Marroquin, and the titular song All I Care About Is Love, theoretically sung by Jerry Orbach, at least according to the subtitles. It sure doesn't sound like him, though. Did you catch that?

[1:47] Mo Brady: No, I didn't.

[1:48] Aaron Albano: In the subtitles, it labels it Orbach, but I was like, this doesn't sound like Jerry Orbach at all.

[1:54] Mo Brady: Oh, so it'd have to be a different Orbach. I do not know any other people with the name Orbach.

[1:59] Aaron Albano: Same. The total viewership hits its all-time run-of-show low this week, clocking in at 806,000 viewers, down 72,000 from the previous episode, with DVR viewers also dipping down to 442,000. However, live viewers went up from last week to 364,000. And what happens in this episode, Mo?

[2:20] Mo Brady: Bob is on the knife's edge with editing the Lenny Bruce biopic six months behind schedule and rehearsals for Chicago scheduled to start in just three days. But his diet of dexedrine, cigarettes, and stress is giving him coughing fits in rehearsal that send him to the emergency room, arriving just in time for doctors to observe his first heart attack. Forced to come face-to-face with the ticking time bomb inside his rib cage, Bob thinks back to the beginning of his career, when he proved himself to bored patrons in sleazy nightclubs and a father who looked down on him but wouldn't let him quit dancing. That need for audience's validation and push to prove himself follows Bob to this day, but that inner drive may also be the thing that kills him.

[3:02] Aaron Albano: Spoiler alert, it does.

[3:05] Mo Brady: The heart attack sidelines Bob's work on Chicago by postponing the project for at least four months, but Gwen has contractual approval over the director, and she won't approve of anyone but Bob. The new plan is to start back up in the new year and open in New York in June. Gwen works to orchestrate his recovery, from getting the entire company of Chicago to sign a get well card, to making up their daughter to look like an adult so she can visit Bob in the hospital. After spending six minutes technically deceased, Bob wakes up from surgery on the slow road to recovery, but it isn't until he knows he can have sex does he feel sure that he is fully himself again, so he convinces Ann to have sex with him in his hospital bed. But the incident gives them both the holy trinity of shame, pleasure, and confusion, something Bob is intimately familiar with and has been since his teenage years.

[4:13] Aaron Albano: I mean, I will say before we start, this is the episode that I am stressed to talk about. There wasn't a ton of stuff that happened in this episode. I mean, even episode five, which was all in one place, essentially, there was very little to describe in terms of nouns. A lot of it was just feelings. I thought, what did you think?

[4:35] Mo Brady: I think I agree. There's a lot of adjectives in this episode rather than nouns. Perhaps they are the holy trinity of shame, pleasure, and confusion. This episode is dark as fuck, man.

[4:46] Aaron Albano: Sure. This episode was so dark. I mean, before we get into it, can we shout out Brandon Uranowitz, as Dustin Hoffman, as Lenny Bruce in the editing bay?

[4:56] Mo Brady: I love that. I love it. I love seeing like, seeing like Ethan Slater, and Brandon Uranowitz. Like that's the only place we see them, right?

[5:05] Aaron Albano: Oh, yeah.

[5:06] Mo Brady: On a screen.

[5:07] Aaron Albano: Literally. It's so interesting that they chose to dramatize those moments rather than using just the actual footage. Because, I mean, they could have just pulled two ladies from the movie. They could have just pulled Dustin Hoffman.

[5:19] Mo Brady: That's probably right.

[5:20] Aaron Albano: That's probably where to get the rights.

[5:21] Mo Brady: Yeah, there's probably like rights and legal stuff attached there. But on that train, we're sort of introduced to a new convention in this episode. Bob slipping in and out of doing stand-up a la Lenny Bruce.

[5:32] Aaron Albano: Right. Black and white like Lenny.

[5:35] Mo Brady: Almost telling us what we should be feeling instead of, I feel like the language up to this point was a lot of flashbacks. No audio flashbacks where we just kind of have to like interpret it ourselves.

[5:50] Aaron Albano: Right. Where this is straight up Bob telling us everything. Telling us about his life, telling us what he's thinking, la la la la la. How did you feel about that shift?

[5:59] Mo Brady: It made me uncomfortable. But also, I think that's the point.

[6:02] Aaron Albano: Why did it make you uncomfortable?

[6:03] Mo Brady: It's so bare.

[6:05] Aaron Albano: Interesting.

[6:06] Mo Brady: It's a bitter pill to swallow when he just stands there and says the dismal and dark experiences he's had and how they—

[6:17] Aaron Albano: Interesting.

[6:18] Mo Brady: I think what we associate Bob Fosse with is like a dark and bitter truth coated in delicious candy that makes it go down well.

[6:27] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[6:28] Mo Brady: Right? That's Cabaret. That's Pippin. That's Chicago. Right? But this is more in line with Lenny, which there's none of that.

[6:38] Aaron Albano: None of that. Yeah.

[6:39] Mo Brady: It's just the bitter truth. And you're like, ugh, that tastes gross. And I would rather do something else than watch Bob convince his wife to have sex with him in the hospital bed, which he obviously doesn't want to do.

[6:55] Aaron Albano: I mean, we will get there. Much to my chagrin, we will get there. The tapping's back.

[7:02] Mo Brady: Tapping's back.

[7:03] Aaron Albano: The tapping's back. Why does he write like he's running out of time?

[7:06] Mo Brady: Maybe it's because it's coupled with the stand-up that I feel like the meaning of the tapping has changed. Or at least maybe some of the nuances of the tapping have become more layered.

[7:17] Aaron Albano: I still have not sure what the tapping means in the first place, if I'm being completely honest.

[7:21] Mo Brady: Sure. If it's the fear of death coming upon you, if it is the fear of not living up to your potential legacy, then it feels spot on. Right? Bob has sort of taken this shift. He doesn't want to do cheesy bullshit musical comedies anymore. He's now feeling the pressure to be truly saying something without all of the razzle dazzle. And he feels the pressure to get that right. It is pressure, but it's just the pressure he's feeling now versus the pressure he felt on Cabaret.

[7:57] Aaron Albano: Yeah. I mean, and even the pressure from when he was a child, because we definitely get more... Up to this point, we've been getting flashes of his childhood. Now we see it like almost complete, and he's narrating it from his comedy class. When you strip that like artistic license away, and you just see the situations that he was in just bare bones, it is a lot.

[8:21] Mo Brady: He grew up in show business. He had this young career in Hollywood. Through a 2020 lens or through a 2019 lens, there are parts of that that sound really glamorous. You know, dancing professionally when he was 13. Wow, that's cool. Who are you? Jacob and David Guzman? But like the reality of that, or at least the reality that the show—

[8:44] Aaron Albano: That we get to now peer into, yeah.

[8:46] Mo Brady: Yes, is that that's not glamorous at all.

[8:50] Aaron Albano: In fact, it's rather damaging.

[8:52] Mo Brady: So with Bob literally on his deathbed, you know, there were minutes there in which a machine was breathing for him.

[8:59] Aaron Albano: Yeah, that's fair.

[9:00] Mo Brady: We are seeing Gwen continue to puppeteer, and she is absolutely the puppeteer. Well, she's absolutely the puppeteer of Chicago, right? Her contract gives her approval over every aspect from the lyrics to the sets to the casting to the poster design. She is driving the train. She is the conductor. And yet somehow in her mind, she also gives power over to Bob, right? She says, It's not my show. It's our show. She's not going to move forward even.

[9:28] Mo Brady: Well, I think that's what's also interesting, like we were talking about in the last episode, how this shift has almost happened with Bob's mortality. Gwen, I feel like, is now no longer just puppeteering the person of Bob. Gwen is now puppeteering the legacy of Bob. And arguably, this is where the reverence that we all have for the Fosse style, the Fosse catalog, everything about and associated with him is because of Gwen. I mean, we had been talking about it like that before, and wondering if it was just an accident. But now it almost, in this episode, feels like it's completely on purpose. Like she did this intentionally. Like what struck me the most is the way she is in the rehearsal room.

She's talking to all the dancers, and all the new dancers are there, like for a first rehearsal, and she's like, make sure you have your aspirin every day. This is going to be hard, you're going to be sore, la la la la la. But then at the end, she also says, but you will never be better. And this is with Bob in the room standing right next to her. And that's when I was just like, she's laying the groundwork for how people talk about Fosse.

[10:39] Aaron Albano: Sure. And that way of talking about Fosse is, at least for me, who's taken Fosse dance classes, who has seen Fosse, who has been exposed to the way that the Verdon Fosse legacy is translated now. That feels like a speech I've heard dozens and dozens and dozens of times. And yet, what you're saying is that this is the first time that that speech that I've heard. It's interesting.

[11:08] Mo Brady: Again, just being in, like when I was at Broadway Theater Project, the way his progeny have taken responsibility of carrying that legacy. I would argue that there's no style in musical theater history that's more scrutinized than the Fosse style. That reverence for a man's work starts somewhere. And this show makes it look like it started with Gwen.

[11:37] Aaron Albano: Interesting. And Gwen did it on purpose.

[11:39] Mo Brady: Well, in part to define her own legacy, right? Like, if she bolsters Fosse's legacy, then she's also bolstering her own as Lola, as Roxy, as Charity. But I think that's also where we see the shift of she's no longer wanting to be the king, or the queen. She's fine with being the kingmaker. Yes, does she have benefit to it? Of course. She gets to play Roxy. But even her gratitude in the last episode, like, Bob gave this to me. If we want to really get down to brass tacks, did he really give it to her? Maybe not. She earned every single one of those roles. Some of those roles she even had before he even came on the project. But she is actively choosing to credit this man with her success.

[12:31] Aaron Albano: Which is then so interesting, because it worked so well, that we think of Fosse as more famous or more influential than we do of Verdon. What I'm struck by in this episode is how many things Gwen is puppeteering. She's puppeteering Bob. She's puppeteering Bob's legacy. She's puppeteering the doctor. Oh my gosh, that scene was amazing. With house seats. She's puppeteering Anne. She's puppeteering the company of Chicago. She's running the whole show. She rules New York City. And yet, she doesn't own that power. This is a woman who could, theoretically, if she's running all of this, she could have been like, nah, I'm gonna take Chicago, Hal Prince, we're doing it, right? She's proven herself so capable, and yet, not interested in focusing those energies into her own legacy.

[13:31] Mo Brady: Well, I think we've talked about this before, where she is a woman almost ahead of her time, because someone with that kind of agency would be president of the world at this point. This is the 1970s. She doesn't have that possibility. So she is running the city in the best way she can, without running the city, because culture norms will not allow her. But she's doing it anyway, just not in the most direct way that our eyes in 2020 would want to see her do it.

[14:03] Aaron Albano: And what's, I think, as we're seeing Gwen puppet so well, it's heartbreaking to see, at least in this interpretation, Anne puppeteering so poorly, right?

[14:16] Mo Brady: Well, yeah. I mean, on one hand, the power struggle now is, at least in this episode, is between Gwen and Anne. And Anne is not, she does not have the prowess yet. Which is so interesting, because the whole setup of episode four was that Anne was the only girl in the chorus who wouldn't go to Bob's hotel room, right? The whole reason that she has gained the position of being the wife is because she wouldn't fall for Bob's games.

[14:49] Aaron Albano: You can imagine that great conversation between Joan McCracken and Gwen Verdon in the powder room, where Joan basically gives her life over to Gwen. You can imagine that exact same conversation happening with Gwen playing Joan and Anne playing Gwen.

[15:06] Mo Brady: I don't know, should we get into that now? It's a lot. It's so much, because we've been talking about how this artistic life takes a toll on the artists that lead it. And we're watching now that that is not reserved for Bob and Gwen. We're now seeing Anne feel the repercussions of this role that she's taken on as well. Like, she's absolutely, this cycle continues. Joan was a strong woman that Bob was attracted to, married her. Gwen then became the strong woman that Bob was attracted to. And then Anne became the strong woman that Bob was attracted to. And all three of these women have been beguiled by Bob and lost their agencies in some way. Like, arguably, we're watching Gwen gain those things back because her star is too bright to be eclipsed.

But when Anne is in the lobby after the deed, and she's just sitting there, and this very nice stranger walks up and is like, Hey, we have an extra sandwich. Would you like it? You need to keep up your strength, and then questions her on who she's there for. And she says, My husband, and my heart broke. And then she just starts bawling. I'm like, here we are again. And what's interesting about this episode is that Phantom Bob, Dream Bob, Fantasy Bob, Stand Up Comedian Bob, like spells it out for us.

[17:04] Aaron Albano: Yeah, when he says, being scared, turned on, confused, guilty, self loathing, and in lust, screws up your relationships for the rest of your life.

[17:06] Mo Brady: Yeah. And then we watched it happen. And it all began. Dream Bob gives the credit of that to him being raped as a child by these prostitutes. And yes, like gender things aside, this was a rape. And what sucks about it is just in the previous episode, we watch him get lauded for it by his friends in the house. Oh, yeah. Like Patty tells the story as it's something to be super proud of. And Bob like laughs it off, pretending to be like fake proud of it. And then we watch in this episode that it's like, it screwed him up. And it's fascinating how because also what like, when reflecting on that, Bob as a teenager, was raped by these prostitutes. Gwen as a teenager, was raped by the wonderful Santino Fontana. There's so much in this cycle that like just continues when it's not addressed and when it's not dealt with and when it's not processed. I mean, you said it was a downer of an episode, Aaron, and you were right.

[18:04] Aaron Albano: Yay, I think.

[18:13] Mo Brady: To keep up to date with next week's recap, be sure to watch episode seven of Fosse Verdon Nowadays. You can find that on Hulu. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady.

[18:24] Aaron Albano: And by me, Aaron Albano. There are two great ways you can be helping The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And the second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening, everyone. Until next time.