MORE ON CHICAGO THEN AND NOW By Peter Filichia
When we left Roxie Hart last Tuesday, she was singing “My Own Best Friend” – all by herself. Yes, John Kander and Fred Ebb originally conceived their song as a solo for the woman that Fred Casely wished he’d never met. Only as time went on did Velma Kelly, an equally guilty murderer, join the […]
CHICAGO THEN AND NOW By Peter Filichia
CHICAGO’s hitting the 11,000-performance mark last month inspired me. I pulled out the Bob Fosse-Fred Ebb script from August 3, 1973 – 22 months before the show came to Broadway. Let’s all see how the John Kander and Ebb score changed or was enhanced during that span, which included a tryout in Philadelphia. “All That […]
THE WOMAN WHO WROTE ABOUT WOMEN WRITING MUSICALS By Peter Filichia
Maybe you don’t know who Mae Anwerda Sloane or Annelu Burns were, but Jennifer Ashley Tepper sure does. They’re just two of the dozens upon dozens of subjects that Tepper recounts in her astonishing new book Women Writing Musicals. Oh, Tepper admits in her compelling introduction that she doesn’t get around to every woman who […]
DOES MERRILY HAVE AN OUTSIDERS’ CHANCE? By Peter Filichia
Will the winner be THE OUTSIDERS or MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG? We’re talking about the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. All right, there are four other nominees. But in the Charity-Begins-at-Home Department, we here at Masterworks Broadway – which recorded both THE OUTSIDERS and MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG – are rooting for […]
AL HIRSCHFELD: IT’S IN THE CARDS By Peter Filichia
Zero Mostel as Peter Pan? Carol Channing as Lady Macbeth? Robert Preston and Sammy Davis, Jr. as the Dromio twins in THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE? Sounds crazy, no? But in 1964, Al Hirschfeld – arguably the world’s greatest caricaturist – decided to have some fun. He imagined how these lofty entertainers would look in roles […]
