Mary MacLeod on Getting at the ‘Heart’ of Fosse’s Damn Yankees
One Saturday morning early last spring, Mary MacLeod set off to judge a dance competition, turning off her cell phone before beginning her day. At lunch break, she noticed her phone blinking and plugged into the message. It was from Nicole Fosse, daughter of Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse, asking MacLeod if she would consider recreating her father’s choreography for an “Encores” summer revival of “Damn Yankees.” Fosse had synthesized his style on isolation—fingers, toes, wrists, spine and pelvis melded into a mesmerizing assemblage of movement, and he has since become one of musical theatre’s great legends. Since there is no “university of Bob Fosse” where a choreographer can pluck people for Fosse shows like ballet dancers who are selected from company schools, his style lives on only through dancers who can carry this movement quality in their own bodies and teach it to others. Mary MacLeod is one of those fortunate people.
“I had never met Bob,” MacLeod said with a laugh, “but I was very close to Gwen Verdon, especially during the last six years of her life. Nicole [Fosse] asked me to undertake this project because I had worked with Gwen through three workshops, and Gwen liked the way I danced his work. Though she was tough, she was also nurturing and eventually became my mentor. She carefully taught the dancers all the nuances of Bob’s vocabulary and style.” These workshops eventually evolved into “Fosse,” the 1999 hugely successful Broadway hit, a retrospective of his work both on stage and film.
For “Encores,” MacLeod was to reconstruct the original Damn Yankees choreography. The show opened in 1955 and had 30 people in the ensemble; only 15 were cast in the “Encores” revival. How was she to begin this awesome task? First thought—get the movie, but the movie version with Verdon as Lola proved to be a disappointing source. MacLeod discovered that “Two Lost Souls,” the fanciful dance number, was different from the show version, too different to be much help. Then there was no footage at all for “The Game,” the big number for the team in the show. “I did get hold of the original George Abbott script with type-written notes in the margins,” she said, “[with] directions like step on left, point to guy, three steps to right, etc. I wasn’t sure who wrote in those directions, but I used them. It was a road map, a way to begin.”
Much to MacLeod’s delight, Harvey Evans, a dancer in the original national tour, surfaced. “Oh my God, how wonderful it was to have him,” she exclaimed. “He remembered so many phrases, especially from ‘Two Lost Souls,’ and we found a still shot of two of the guys crawling on their backs, the length of the stage, puffing on cigarettes. Harvey told me it was in the original. I said ‘we’ll do it, too!’” It was a show-stopping sequence drawing applause in the middle of the number.
John Selya & Jane Krakowski in "Damn Yankees"
Photo by Jane Marcus
Bob Fosse’s early work (of which “Damn Yankees” was a part) rose out of his love for vaudeville. Both Verdon and Fosse loved Charlie Chaplin, the baggy pants walk and the waddling from leg to leg in an exaggerated turnout. Evans also recalled that Verdon would bring in simple images that nailed the feeling right on. “Harvey told me that in teaching the baseball walk Gwen would present this image to the class: ‘Walk like you have poop in your pants,’ she would say, and suddenly everyone knew what to do. She told us how Bob loved matadors and the way they stood; their exaggerated pulled-up stance inspired him. He wanted that look from his dancers as well.” He continually searched for dancers who affected him in a certain way and then promised: “Don’t worry, I’ll teach you the style.”
Fosse took acting classes with Sanford Meisner, who taught him to trust the simplicity of quiet and to believe in stillness on stage. It wasn’t necessary to be busy “stepping” every moment. “When the guys sing ‘Heart’ they must project a deep feeling from within,” MacLeod said. “The number can make you cry though the guys are just standing there singing. There isn’t a lot of movement. Their eyes tell the story. Or when Joe Hardy, the protagonist says to the devil, ‘I want to be the greatest baseball player,’ it has to come from a true place or it’s just a line. “Make no mistake Bob liked beautiful people in his shows,” MacLeod emphasized. “But he liked individuals more and in casting ‘Yankees’ I tried to follow that.”
One dancer MacLeod went with for Yankees was former ABT soloist John Selya, fresh from “Movin’ Out” and eager to get back on the stage but with absolutely no prior Fosse experience. “He was SO anxious,” MacLeod remembered. “I offered him the duet with Jane, ‘Who’s Got the Pain,’ the number Bob and Gwen did in the movie.” “Can I do Fosse?” Selya questioned himself and MacLeod. “I used Bob’s answer, ‘I’ll teach you,’ I assured him. I knew John could dance anything.” Though MacLeod tred on water with her choice of Selya, she was confident he would pull through. “Let’s just get in the studio,” she advised him. Though he melted down a bit before the show opened, the critics singled him out, and his personal reviews were raves.
Prior to the first day of rehearsal with the entire cast, MacLeod had been working for a month on preproduction with Selya and Jane Krakowski, who took Verdon’s part as Lola, along with her assistant Greg Graham, and a mountain of research she had compiled on the Fosse choreography from “Damn Yankees.” “This was a very intimate period, a great get-to-know time for the four of us, and we didn’t want to share it with other dancers yet,” MacLeod said. “Jane was faced with stepping into the shoes of an icon, and she knew she would be compared to Gwen. I kept reminding her that she is not Gwen and must forge her own concept. I tried to challenge her to remember that everything good comes out of hard work, and it did. She is now dancing in a way she never thought possible.”
For the most part MacLeod was a stranger to the dancers on that first morning of rehearsal with the entire cast. Some didn’t know her name except for the brief introduction at the calls that were months ago. Some stared at her wondering if she knew what she was doing. “Sure I knew I had this big job to do,” she admitted, “and so much to accomplish in just two weeks of ensemble rehearsal, and I realized I could not let my nerves get to me. I just couldn’t let myself think about what these dancers thought of me.”
Getting into the eight-times-a-week run, MacLeod’s responsibility to the show was to keep the style clean, simple and true to Fosse. She continued to underline the relationship between the music and the steps, pointing out that Fosse had always insisted on orchestrating the music for his numbers. Most dancers find the Fosse choreography highly specialized; staying connected to the music is a necessity. “Muscle memory gets blurred, and one thing both Nicole and I do not want to lose is that miraculous style, that ‘Heart’ that is ‘Damn Yankees.’”