HAIL TO THE CHIEFS! By Peter Filichia
Mary Martin? Audra McDonald? Patti LuPone? Bernadette Peters? Angela Lansbury? Ethel Merman? Over the years, I’ve heard many claim that one of these performers is The First Lady of Musical Theater. But here’s a question. If for all these years we’ve had a First Lady of Musical Theater, why haven’t we had a President of […]
MF IN MJ By Peter Filichia
There will be those who’ll automatically say, “If I want to listen to Michael Jackson, I’ll listen to Michael Jackson himself. Why would I buy a cast album with all the songs he made famous only to hear them sung by other people?” There’s another way of looking at the situation. The power of the […]
HAPPY 20TH, HAIRSPRAY! By Peter Filichia
When you think of it, HAIRSPRAY will actually be celebrating two anniversaries this week. Twenty years have passed since the musical theater aficionados met the Turnblads of Baltimore. And aren’t we glad we did? In his 1988 film, John Waters gave us irrepressible teen Tracy Turnblad that songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman beautifully musicalized […]
SHRINK RAP By Peter Filichia
Do psychiatrists really take off the entire month of August? Judith Rossner certainly substantiated this belief in her novel – called, naturally enough, AUGUST. However, a 2010 Wall Street Journal article said a psychiatrist’s skipping 31 consecutive midsummer days had become a thing of the past. That’s good news for our 21st-century musical theater characters, […]
Getting into INTO THE WOODS Again By Peter Filichia
As a certain Witch sings, “Don’t you know what’s out there in the world?” Sure! There’s a new production of INTO THE WOODS at Broadway’s St. James Theatre. Can it really be 35 years since composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and bookwriter James Lapine debuted their new musical (and eventually won Tonys for it)? That question came […]
