1,448 stories by "Peter Filichia"
It all started in late 2001, after I read A Cat's Diary: How the Broadway Production of 'Cats' Was Born by Stephen Mo Hanan. Near the end of the book, he noted that Cats won seven Tonys -- a…
So did we all stay in on Sunday night and watch those Super Bowl commercials? So many loved six-year-old actor Max Page, the mini-Darth Vader in a VW ad. Good Lord, the kid didn't have to …
Interesting, isn't it, that when Robert Buckner got the assignment to write Yankee Doodle Dandy -- that 1942 biopic of George M. Cohan -- he decided to start with I'd Rather Be Right? Buck…
Congratulations to Fred Abramowitz, Val Addams, Peter Alfano, AnyaToes, John Atkins, Susan Berlin, Brigadude, Richard Brock, Jeremy Fassler, Lara Fodor, Laura Frankos, John Greene, John Grif…
It was the month Chicago lost in football but was still winning on Broadway. How does it do it? And to think that in only six months, it'll pass in number of performances the show that origi…
So Encores! is getting pretty serious. The wonderful series at City Center has since 1993 allowed us to see a panoply of musical styles: operetta (The New Moon), revue (The Ziegfeld Follies …
They did the first musical for money, and wrote the second one for the love and the fun of it.
Bashville. Not Nashvile. Bashville. Ever heard of it? It's a 1983 London musical that's based on The Admirable Bashville, a 1902 play by George Bernard Shaw.
At the after-party at of The Little Dog Laughed at the Bickford Theatre in Morris Township, New Jersey, people were talking, and Liz McCartney's name came up. And I realized I never have iss…
Too early to be thinking about Toronto in June? Not after you hear what's happening theatrically in the city that's often referred to as Broadway North. Actually, a more popular nickname…
On Monday, we had the first part of the 2011 Broadway University Mid-Term. It was, as virtually all of my quizzes have been, a list of 50 lines and lyrics which you're to identify by song an…
"New York is the center of New York," snarls Rose in Gypsy. Well, perhaps it is only that, but it's certainly the center of the Broadway musical.
Have you ever noticed that the final line of The Importance of Being Earnest isn't quite the title of the play?
89 years ago this week, Leonid Andreyev's He Who Gets Slapped opened on Broadway. Do you know this fascinating play?
It all started in rural Illinois when she was three. "My great aunt was a honky-tonk pianist," says Marianne Challis. "And soon I was in front of people singing 'Twenty Froggies Went to Scho…
So La Bete is closing a little early, and will log in a mere 101 performances when it shutters this Sunday. It couldn't even fulfill its limited engagement and make it to February 13.
Well, we made it to the New Year. The worst any of our tombstones will state as our death date is 2011.
It was the month that I had even greater respect for Jim Miller, Joe Miller, Paul Roberts, Thom Snode and Ed Weissman. They're the ones who knew the answer to my seemingly impossible Brainte…
On Monday, I listed the nine best productions I saw all year, saying I'd save the 10th for today: a production I saw when I had one night in Paris.
Each December, they're as common as candy canes: the lists of the best and the worst productions of 2010.
Twelve-year old Bonnie Langford was in the wings waiting to perform at a benefit. Even at this tender age, she was already a seasoned stage veteran, having played Bonnie Butler in the 1970 m…
Now that it's close to December 25, friends and relatives have been asking me what I want for Christmas.
It started on Thursday, when "geof" on All That Chat noted that Dec. 16 was the 50th anniversary of the opening of Wildcat - the N. Richard Nash-Cy Coleman-Carolyn Leigh musical that starred…
Allen Neuner wrote, "I enjoyed reading your review of (Ken Bloom's) new Hollywood Musicals book. I was struck by the author's comment that he couldn't include High School Musical I and II be…
After I replicated Allen Neuner's e-mail on Wednesday, I got a lovely deluge of responses from his asking "So put the question to your loyal readers: which made-for-TV musicals would they se…
