484 stories from Masterworks Broadway
By Peter Filichia
So I celebrated Stephen Sondheim's eighty-fifth birthday on March 22 in a way in which he wouldn't have approved.
I played the original cast album of Do I Hea…
By Peter Filichia
Let me spell it out for you so you won't be as disappointed as Homer and Bart Simpson were on January 4, 1998.
Simpsons pere and fils went to a video rental s…
By Peter Filichia
Can fifty-three years have really passed since I saw my first pre-Broadway tryout?
It happened on March 10, 1962 at the Colonial Theatre in Boston where I saw I Can …
By Peter Filichia
Long before we turned our attentions to Elphaba and away from Dorothy Gale, bookwriter Sidney Michaels, composer Larry Grossman and lyricist Hal Hackady had the same…
By Peter Filichia
Now that we've celebrated February and Black History Month, let's move to March, which is Women's History Month.
Readers are encouraged to spend each day of t…
By Peter Filichia
Did you know that February 18 is National Advice Day?
Probably not. But someone decided it is.
Perhaps a musical theater lyricist invented the "holiday…
By Peter Filichia
Faithful readers will recall that two weeks ago I mentioned that I preferred "Together Wherever We Go" on the 1973 London Cast Album of Gypsy. Because it offers all …
By Peter Filichia
Time does fly, does it not? Already more than one twelfth of the "new" year in gone, and now we're already in Black History Month.
I trust that on Sunday, Feb…
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Characters
By Peter Filichia
While at Barnes & Noble to get Jeremy Aufderheide's How the Wiz Was, my eye fell on Stephen Covey's best-selle…
By Peter Filichia
Forty-four years ago this week, Broadway was hit by a hit that changed the course of musical theater.
In the twenty years before the 1971 revival of No, No, N…
By Peter Filichia
Had life been kinder to all of us, Gwen Verdon would still be here to celebrate her 90th birthday on January 13. Alas, we lost her 14 years ago, but at least we stil…
Elvis Can Still Be in the Building
By Peter Filichia
Eighty.
Yes, eighty.
That's how old Elvis Pres…
By Peter Filichia
We can't let 2014 got by without acknowledging that the year marks the eightieth anniversary of Anything Goes.
I'm a little late to the party, for the Cole Po…
By Peter Filichia
It's one of the most musical musical movies of all time, with many more songs than spoken lines.
And yet, even with all that music and those reams of lyrics, …
By Peter Filichia
There was a time when Hollywood played fast and loose with Broadway musicals. Many, if not most of the songs that charmed New York were discarded in the California s…
By Peter Filichia
Because the current revival of Chicago recently passed Cats to become the second-longest running musical in Broadway history, I decided to go back forty-one years an…
By Peter Filichia
Although the 1996 revival of Chicago opened to splendid reviews, did anyone at the time believe that it would become the second-longest running production in Broadwa…
By Peter Filichia
You know what expression I really hate?
"Guilty pleasure."
I hope you don't know what it means " because that would show me that you've never used it.
…
By Peter Filichia
A speak-singing leading man and a lilting soprano leading lady play characters who meet in London in the early 20th century. He's the one with pedigree while she's t…
By Peter Filichia
See the current revival of On the Town on Broadway, and you'll hear three sailors proclaim "New York, New York -- a helluva town."
See the 1949 film version a…
By Peter Filichia
"There are words to which I lift my hat," says Emily Dickinson -- well, at least the Emily Dickinson in William Luce's one-woman play The Belle of Amherst. It's now …
By Peter Filichia
David Foubert is an excellent king, Jessica Wortham an extraordinary queen and Katie Wieland is marvelous as the woman who succeeded her.
They're all currentl…
Getting to the Bottom of Nine
By Peter Filichia
If you're in New York -- and are a fan of Nine -- you should saunter downtown to Theatre for a New City to see a revival of Six …
Happy Eighty-Ninth, Angela Lansbury!
By Peter Filichia
The first three words that Angela Lansbury ever sang in a Broadway musical would in time turn out to be thoroughly inaccu…
By Peter Filichia
"Forty-five ways to go," my buddy Ed Weissman wrote after he read my column inspired byWonderful Town's song for Ruth Sherwood: "100 Easy Ways to Lose a Man."
…
