484 stories from Masterworks Broadway
By Peter Filichia
In Wonderful Town, Rosalind Russell played Ruth Sherwood, a bright if not dazzlingly attractive woman who decries her bad luck with the opposite sex. (You can hear h…
By Peter Filichia
If you're reading this on Tuesday, September 23, it's the fiftieth anniversary of the day in 1964 that Joseph Stein, Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, Jerome Robbins, Har…
By Peter Filichia
"It's the little things, the little things" Elaine Stritch insisted in Company. And she was right -- little things do mean a lot. That's especially true of those lit…
By Peter Filichia
Last week, I used the excuse of "National Sewing Month" to introduce you to Pins and Needles.
Hey, whatever it takes. The 1962 studio cast album of Pins and …
By Peter Filichia
September is National Sewing Month, so this would seem to be as good a time as any to honor people who work with pins and needles.
It's also a good chance to …
By Peter Filichia
Musical theater writers have many goals, but there's one for which they always aim.
Write a song that will advance the action.
There are plenty of wond…
By Peter Filichia
If I had a chance to run into Leonard Bernstein wherever he is now, I'd ask him to forgive me.
I just " for the first time ever " heard the Original London Ca…
By Peter Filichia
What a good season for Bill Russell! He's just seen one of his musicals return to off-Broadway -- Pageant, now at the Davenport Theatre on West 45th " and come Octob…
By Peter Filichia
Remember, 1776 is first and foremost an entertainment. What was not on the minds of its bookwriter Peter Stone or its composer-lyricist Sherman Edwards was 100% hist…
By Peter Filichia
There are plenty of raised eyebrows at Connecticut Repertory Theatre as soon as many theatergoers hear the first note of the overture.
Long-time fans of Gypsy…
By Peter Filichia
Can't you just see Elaine Stritch entering heaven, looking around, seeing all those angels in their wings and muttering "Does anyone still wear a halo?"
All r…
By Peter Filichia
Had all gone well, a revival of Pump Boys and Dinettes would have opened on April 8, 2013.
But two months to the day before the planned opening, the six produ…
By Peter Filichia
During his long career, Ed Ames only made two appearances on Broadway. In 1962, he took over for Jerry Orbach as Paul the puppeteer in Carnival; then in 1963, he ori…
I once asked Charles Strouse if he expected that "Baby, Talk to Me" would be Bye Bye Birdie's big hit.
After all, it was the first featured song in the overture, placed and played wit…
Most of the hundreds of original cast albums have of course been recorded in studios. A few have been recorded live, such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt's Porgy & Bess, the British Moby Dick an…
By Peter Filichia
What a nice event at the Spiral Theatre Studio last Wednesday night. At Richard Skipper Celebrates, a chat-series helmed by the eponymous raconteur, the ever-charmin…
By Peter Filichia
All right, most of us don't like the semi-recent phenomenon of "jukebox musicals." And yet, we must admit that far more often than not such shows spur entertaining o…
By Peter Filichia
So many of us who are crying out for original musicals are doubly grateful for If/Then " because it gives us two of them.
Bookwriter-lyricist Brian Yorkey doe…
By Peter Filichia
On Friday, May 16, when the Dow Jones average hit 16,491, I interviewed the woman who'd hundreds of times said that the Dow had hit 1,000.
She was lying. But …
<p>By Peter Filichia</p>
<p>Even a splendid production of <i>Allegro</i>, such as the one that Tom Wojtunik is delivering right now at The Astoria Perfor…
By Peter Filichia
Do I hear a waltz? Of course I do. Isn't Androcles and the Lion by Richard Rodgers? And getting a song in three-quarter time is a given in any of the legendary composer's s…
By Peter Filichia
"So I see they went and made a musical out of Irma La Douce."
That will be the reaction from some when they hear that Encores! is presenting Irma La Douce from May 7-11 at…
By Peter Filichia
I'd hate to let the month go by without acknowledging the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth.
No one can be 100% certain that we should have celebrated it on April 2…
By Peter Filichia
Last September, when I wrote about the re-release of Speaking of Love and With Love from Hollywood " two recordings made in the '50s by Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy " man…
By Peter Filichia
"Rumson Creek" from Paint Your Wagon is a nifty little ditty, but it lasts a mere fifty seconds. Thus, at ninety-nine cents a download, you're paying two cents a second.
T…
