All That Jazz

1979, Bob Fosse, USA

1, 2, 3, 4! 

We’re opening our 2025 programme with a pop of energy, jazz hands, leotards, and lights with All That Jazz, a masterful musical that manages to be both glitzy and gritty, splashy and psychological. Legendary choreographer and director, Bob Fosse, explodes his own life on stage in this nerve-jangling, amphetamine-fuelled pseudo-biopic. 

An exercise in audaciousness and pure showbiz, All that Jazz pushes the limits of the musical to new heights of artistry, with an unstoppable forward drive matching the intensity of the protagonist, Joe Gideon, who is a stand-in for Fosse himself. All That Jazz thrums with a unique energy, following the breakdown of Gideon as he tries to ensure that the show (and all that props up his outsized ego) goes on, intensified by stunning dance numbers choreographed by Fosse, with due credit to Gwen Verdon, his largely un-credited collaborator and wife.

Cited by some as Fosse’s answer to Fellini’s 8 ½ , All That Jazz impresses as an emotionally potent (and glitzed-up) auto-fictional account of a life on the edge. To describe it as merely an intense psychological study, or an exercise in spectacle would be to do it an injustice… it’s showtime, folks!