Beggar’s Can Be for You Choosers By Peter Filichia
Beggar’s Can Be for You Choosers By Peter Filichia Long before Forbidden Broadway’s Gerard Alessandrini put his own lyrics to existing melodies, John Gay (1685-1732) did the same with The Beggar’s Opera. Unlike Alessandrini, Gay didn’t center on songs from musicals – for the good reason that none existed at the time. What Gay did […]
Forty Years, Forty Facts for A Chorus Line
By Peter Filichia Actually, the title of Tom Rowan’s A Chorus Line FAQ does prove once again that you can’t judge a book by its title. “FAQ,” of course, stands for “Frequent Asked Questions.” But Rowan doesn’t structure his book as questions and answers; he simply gives a straightforward account of how one of the […]
WHEN A CHORUS LINE WAS STARTING OUT By Peter Filichia
WHEN A CHORUS LINE WAS STARTING OUT By Peter Filichia “Remember the first time you saw A Chorus Line?” So went a television commercial that aired around 1983, a little more than halfway through the show’s then-record 6,137-performance Broadway run. Now I’ll ask you “Remember the first time you heard A Chorus Line?” For some of […]
Raisin’ Some Memories of Raisin By Peter Filichia
Raisin’ Some Memories of Raisin By Peter Filichia Funny thing; soon after I’d watched the film 42 — which details Jackie Robinson’s historic journey in becoming become baseball’s first black player and superstar — I realized that that number was about to be relevant to African-American history once again. Raisin – the musical version of […]
Clearing Up Clear Day by Peter Filichia
By Peter Filichia It was the first musical to be denied a Best Musical Tony nomination and yet win the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Until Aida in 2000, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever was the only show to hold that distinction. Bookwriter-lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane had […]
