The Most Underrated Musical of the New Millennium
By Peter Filichia How well I remember the early morning of Friday, March 15, 2002. I had to go out of town, and my friend Ken Bloom had volunteered to drive me to the airport, even though I was catching an early morning flight. En route, we commiserated on the not-good reviews that Sweet Smell […]
Hello Again to Hello Again
By Peter Filichia If you can get to the always excellent Transport Group’s current production of Hello Again, so much the better. But if you cannot, there’s always the excellent original cast album of Michael John LaChiusa’s 1994 musical that was released shortly after the world premiere. The cast at the Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln […]
You Must Meet My Wife and Life
By Peter Filichia It’s been 38 years now since A Little Night Music opened and Fredrik told Desiree, “You must meet my wife.” Indeed we did, in one of Stephen Sondheim’s most fetching waltzes. “My happiest mistake, the ache of my life,” he sang, giving us a rhyme we might well have seen coming. Oh, […]
Presidential Musicals
By Peter Filichia — Spent Presidents’ Day thinking about presidents who’ve shown up in musicals. Recall that Lola sang, “You’ve seen the sign that says, ‘George Washington once slept here’? Well, though nobody spied him, guess who was beside him?” in “A Little Brains – A Little Talent” in Damn Yankees. Gwen Verdon said she […]
The New Walter Mitty
By Peter Filichia — Most long-time football fans don’t realize it, but they know a song from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. How can this be? The musical version of James Thurber’s short story only ran 96 performances during the 1964-1965 season, and off-Broadway at that. While Columbia did record the cast album, no […]
