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The Desert Song: The Musical Road to Morocco

The Desert Song: The Musical Road to Morocco

By Peter Filichia – Remember the 1965 film The Great Race? In it, the famous ‘20s daredevil known as The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) is intent on getting lovely journalist Maggie DuBois (Natalie Wood) into bed. He’s got to set the perfect romantic mood, of course, so he must choose just the right music. And […]

A Bite of The Apple Tree

A Bite of The Apple Tree

By Peter Filichia — Two points before we get to the meat of the matter: Point One: Legendary Columbia cast album producer Goddard Lieberson hated spoken introductions to songs. He believed that people would enjoy them once, but not with repeated playings. He often omitted dialogue in the middle of songs, too, which was really […]

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: Encores! Cast Recording 2012

Have More Fun with Blondes

By Peter Filichia — So Ivy Lynn didn’t take those pills and got to play Marilyn Monroe after all. Well, in a manner of speaking. In one of the smartest casting decisions in recent years, Megan Hilty was cast as Lorelei Lee – an iconic Monroe role – in the Encores! semi-production of Gentlemen Prefer […]

Side by Side

Side by Side

By Peter Filichia – Congratulations to all who did so well on last week’s Ancient History Exam. WRix was the first to get the commonality of the 35 songs I listed from 35 different musicals: that in the old days of long-playing records, each of these songs began the second side of the record. That’s […]

70,_Girls,_70

An Ancient History Exam

By Peter Filichia – During the dog days of summer, there’s little to do, and people tend to get a little lazy. Let’s shake things up with a quiz on ancient Broadway history. Well, not so ancient, depending on your viewpoint. One of the musicals cited here opened (and closed) in 1981. But suddenly that’s […]

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.