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A SINATRA-LESS SINATRA CELEBRATION

By Peter Filichia So there was a great deal of hoopla this month over Frank Sinatra’s centenary. Radio stations and Internet providers went all the way with their coverage on Dec. 12, 2015, which would have been Sinatra’s 100th birthday. Plenty of friends told me that they spent the day playing Sinatra recordings. Call me […]

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Ethan Mordden ON SONDHEIM by Peter Filichia

By Peter Filichia There are dozens of reasons to read Ethan Mordden’s great books on musical theater. Let me tell you one of my favorites: Mordden’s revelatory opinions on musical after musical get me to revisit these shows’ cast albums. Sometimes I want to relive a glorious song that he’s praised; other times I’m out […]

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THE WIZ AND I by Peter Filichia

By Peter Filichia “You MUST tape it.” That was the decree from all my musical theater-centric friends who were in the habit of buying each and every original cast album. Once these New Yorkers and Bostonians knew that my wife and I were driving to Baltimore to attend the first-ever performance of The Wiz at […]

The Golden Age of Broadway on Vinyl

A GREAT TURN OF PHRASE by Peter Filichia

By Peter Filichia One of the great ingredients of the musicals from The Golden Age of Broadway was its lyrics. Wordsmiths gave much attention and care to finding j-u-s-t the right word, the perfect rhyme and the ideal scansion. And every now and then, they’d give us a little lagniappe by taking a phrase that had […]

You're a Good Man

On Stage, Charlie Brown! by Peter Filichia

By Peter Filichia The Peanuts Movie had me remembering a feeling I’ve had for decades. Charlie Brown got away with murder. I don’t mean that Charles Schulz’s pie-faced cartoon character actually killed anyone. Although I do believe that if the kid ever did rub out Lucy van Pelt, a smart lawyer for the defense in “The […]

Peter Filichia is the theater critic emeritus for the Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey and News 12 New Jersey.

He is a columnist each Friday for www.mtishows.com and www.kritzerland.com.

Filichia is the author of Let’s Put on a Musical, now in its third printing; Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit of the Season / The Biggest Flop of the Season and Broadway Musical MVPs 1960-2010: The Most Valuable Players of the Last 50 Seasons. His new book, Strippers, Showgirls, and Sharks will be published in May, 2013 by St. Martin’s Press.

He has been a columnist for Playbill, Theater.com, Theatermania and Theater Week.

Before joining the Theatre World Awards in 1996 as host and head of the selection committee, Filichia served four terms as president of the Drama Desk. He has served on an assessment panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, and is currently critic-in-residence for the University of Cincinnati-Conservatory of Music and the musical theater judge for the ASCAP Awards program.