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WITNESS WITNESS UGANDA By Peter Filichia

Wouldn’t you say that African music ranks among the most exciting? The chants, the rhythms, the drums, the energy, the emphasis on melody: all those elements make many of us who are interested in musical theater wish that there were more cast albums in this genre. So here’s WITNESS UGANDA, a recording that will thrill […]

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IN LIEU OF A GRAMMY BROADCAST… By Peter Filichia

And the 2022 Grammy for the Best Musical Theater Album goes to … Well, to quote a song from a 1984 Grammy nominee for Best Cast Show Album, as the category was then awkwardly called, “Who knows? Who knows? Who knows?” (That song is “The Best of Times” from LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, if you […]

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ANOTHER ORPHAN ANNE: OF GREEN GABLES By Peter Filichia

When we discuss musicals that have had the longest runs, we shouldn’t just limit ourselves to THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and THE FANTASTICKS. How about ANNE OF GREEN GABLES? Aside from the last two years when COVID stopped performances, it’s been running since 1965. Admittedly, this didn’t happen either on Broadway or off; the closest this musical has […]

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RAGTIME REDUX By Peter Filichia

“Look what I found in the laundry room!” So exclaimed my girlfriend when I went to her apartment last week. It was a copy of THEATER WEEK Magazine, the periodical for which I wrote a weekly column for much of its nine-year existence, from summer 1987 to winter 1996. This was one from August 19, […]

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CAPSULE COMMENTS By Peter Filichia

Would we see a picture of Abraham Lincoln in a casket? Rumor had it that such a photograph was enclosed in a time capsule that was 134 years old. In 1887, it had been placed in the pedestal that supported the statue of General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia. After the statue had been […]

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.