THE GROUNDHOG DAY GROUPIE By Peter Filichia
That lyric from FOLLIES – “Thank-you-for-the-present-but-what’s-wrong-with-it-stuff?” – will never be heard in the home of Cheryl Solimini and Martin Farawell. For Cheryl’s birthday in 2017, Martin bought two tickets to GROUNDHOG DAY: THE MUSICAL. Both had seen the original film and liked it. However, since 2009, they had been great fans of songwriter Tim Minchin’s […]
PLAYNG THE PALACE By Peter Filichia
Stewart F. Lane will bring back memories to many, as well as important history to others. His It Happened at the Palace is a coffee table book that will keep you up even if you don’t drink any coffee. Lane is celebrating the theater that he’s co-owned since 1980 – nearly seven decades after it […]
ALL SHOOK UP OVER ELVIS PRESLEY’S 90TH By Peter Filichia
Elvis famously sang “Oh, well, a-bless my soul, but what’s wrong with me?” but I’ll instead say, “Oh, well, a-bless my soul, but what’s wrong with them?” Two weeks ago at Graceland, a celebration was held for what would have been – gulp! – Presley’s 90th birthday. Concerts as well as conversations with some of […]
URINETOWN IS READY TO TAKE SOME ENCORES!
With URINETOWN soon returning to the theatrical horizon (thanks to Encores!), memories from the past quarter-century are flooding back. Memory One: Late 1998. I walk into the office of an artistic director of a highly regarded theater company. He starts talking without as much as a “Hello.” “You think it’s easy being an artistic director?” he snarls, holding a bound copy of a script he’s grasping from the bottom. He’s slowly waving it […]
GO TO BREL By Peter Filichia
There were plenty of conversations such as this 57 years ago this week: MUSICAL THEATER SAVANT: From what I heard, you can’t even call it a musical. There’s no book. No story. Only four people standing on stage and singing one song after another. That’s entertainment??? MUSICAL THEATER FAN: Well, we all expect to see […]
