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We're on a Carousel

We’re on a Carousel

By Peter Filichia — This June is bustin’ out all over with a recording of Carousel that hasn’t been available for decades. Look around! Look around! Look around! The first studio cast album that was sanctioned by Rodgers and Hammerstein is with us once more. By 1955, recording technology had greatly advanced since Carousel’s original […]

Kiss Me, Kate_0

How Mondegreen Was My Folly

By Peter Filichia — You learn something new every day – or you’re supposed to. And I did when “Scooterberwyn” and “BwayPassion” wrote to correct me on a lyric I’d cited. When I wrote about Damn Yankees last week, I said that the baseball widows rued that their husbands were “out praising the plays of […]

Green Grows the Damn Yankees

Green Grows the Damn Yankees

By Peter Filichia — It’s a record that will probably never be beaten: The New York Yankees’ Joe DiMaggio got a hit in 56 straight games in 1941. All the pitchers he conquered during that streak probably muttered to themselves, “That damn Yankee.” And speaking of Damn Yankees, it has reached a streak of 56, […]

Merry Widow: It Rolls Along

Merry Widow: It Rolls Along

By Peter Filichia — More often than not, when the leads of a studio recording get into the recording booth, they’re meeting for the first time. Their lack of chemistry is far too obvious when one listens to them together in song. That’s certainly true of many recordings of The Merry Widow – but not […]

The Best of the New Faces

The Best of the New Faces

By Peter Filichia — Admit it: when you became interested in musical theater and ran into albums for New Faces of 1952 and New Faces of 1956, you automatically assumed that there was a New Faces on Broadway each and every year. No. All in all, there were only seven New Faces, starting with New […]

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.