1,448 stories by "Peter Filichia"
If you can’t see a musical on closing night, make sure you at least see it during closing week. Many of the show’s fans come out to say goodbye, to revisit the producti…
On the eve of Bye Bye Birdie’s return to Broadway, let’s check in with one of the original young residents of Sweet Apple, Ohio during the show’s original 607-performance r…
Conal Creedon’s one-act plays at the Irish Repertory Theatre are excellent. How I wish that the staging were as accomplished. Not the direction, but the staging. There is a difference.…
By Peter Filichia --
What musical gave its leading character the best opening song as well as the best closing song? For men, the answer is probably My Fair Lady, as Rex Harrison got to si…
So here’s the fourth official Broadway revival of the show that didn’t even finish second in the Best Musical Tony voting when it was originally produced. The Sound of Music and …
Has any Broadway composer-lyricist had as varied a resume as Juno’s Marc Blitzstein?
In 1930, Blitzstein made his Great White Way debut with The Garrick Gaities, that mainstream show…
It was a month where rumors ran rife that Roundabout would mount a revival of High Spirits. If so, wonderful! This is a much underrated show, which I remember fondly, even though I saw it 44…
It was the month that John Neville died. Forty years ago, I saw him play Humbert Humbert in Lolita, My Love at the Shubert in Boston. My buddy Josh Ellis had already seen him do it at the Sh…
The composer's "Nutcracker" music is being used in a new, offbeat musical
Last month, I was asked to judge a competition that the Speech & Theatre Association of New Jersey annually sponsors for high-schoolers. My, I can’t tell you how many teens chose t…
Good Lord, what a great number of would-be casting agents there are out there! I heard from so many of you when I asked on Feb. 6 whom you’d like to see in certain roles. I can see you…
Last month’s brainteaser: What do these musicals have in common? Baby, Bajour, Good Vibrations, The Most Happy Fella, My One and Only, 1776, Stop the World – I Want to Get Off an…
Got a nice e-mail from Dan Langan, who’d read my recent piece on the history of telephones in the theater. He was intrigued by my question, “Who was the first playwright to make …
Did you see that article about Wikipedia in the New York Times last Friday? The fifth-largest website on the ‘net planned to hold “an editing marathon” at the New York Publ…
"Irving Berlin's White Christmas" may be best described by a line from another Irving Berlin show, "Annie Get Your Gun": "Everything about it is appealing."
By Peter Filichia --
Forty-seven years ago this week, musical theater enthusiasts added a new word to their foreign-language vocabulary.
They'd already learned "L'chaim!" from Fiddler on…
Anthony Zerbe is offering Hackettstown audiences a capital evening
Much has been made - and rightly so - that Stephen Schwartz now has musicals ensconced in both theaters at 1633 Broadway. But the pair of shows may have something else in common.
Should we print his name as anthony zerbe? That might be appropriate just this once " for in his latest endeavor, the actor is portraying that upper-case-phobic poet, e.e. cummings, in "It's…
By Peter Filichia --
The birth of any innovation makes for some growing pains. That too was the case with the so-called long-playing record when it came into existence in the late '40s.
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I'm going to break the promise I made to Roy Miller. Last week, Miller, the producer who discovered The Drowsy Chaperone, asked if I'd come to Hershey, Pennsylvania between Nov. 8-13 to see …
New play uses old ideas " amid confusing and tongue-twisting dialogue
By Peter Filichia "
It was to be The Big Show of the season. For decades, "The New Richard Rodgers musical" always was. But Two by Two was going to be The REALLY BIG Show of 1970-1971 becau…
In 1948, there was a musical movie called Summer Holiday, and 11 years later, there was a Broadway musical called Take Me Along. Both came from the same source: Eugene O’Neill’s …
It was a month of up-and-down theatergoing. Betrayed was quite moving; Artfuckers wasn’t, and I’m very glad Come Back Little Sheba came back. The 39 Steps was an accomplished and…
