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  Elvis Can Still Be in the Building       By Peter Filichia       Eighty.       Yes, eighty.       That’s how old Elvis Presley would have been on Thursday, January 8, 2015.       Do the math: The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll — as Presley was […]

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 Porter shipboard classic actually debuted on Nov. 21, 1934. It’s lucky it didn’t have to postpone until 1935, for its original Guy […]

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, director Rob Marshall and screenwriter James Lapine’s film of Into the Woods eliminates quite a few of Stephen Sondheim’s songs. […]

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 studios. Anything Goes, Babes in Arms and The Boys from Syracuse were among the dozens of ‘30s titles that didn’t wind up […]

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 and look at the script that John Kander, Fred Ebb and Fosse had on August 3, 1973. This was coincidentally twenty-two months to the day before […]