PICK A POCKET OR TWO: A TOP PICK By Peter Filichia
Well, here’s a rarity. In an entire book devoted to musical theater, there’s only one reference to Stephen Sondheim. This must be a first in the last half-century. Since the seventies, every book on our favorite art form has doted on Broadway’s greatest composer-lyricist. But the index of PICK A POCKET OR TWO, Ethan Mordden’s […]
MAY SCHMIGADOON RUN FOR 100 YEARS! By Peter Filichia
As much fun as SCHMIGADOON! is – and as great as some of our favorite theater performers are performing in it — you’ll enjoy it even more if you know what’s being parodied. Let’s start at the very beginning of the now-available soundtrack album of Episode One. All those busy violinists fiddling away in the […]
HERE’S HERE’S LOVE By Peter Filichia
Although a number of musicals have exclamation points, one surprisingly doesn’t. HERE’S LOVE If you know the title song from Meredith Willson’s 1963 musical – a jaunty tune in which the title is mentioned many, many times – you’d hear Laurence Naismith as well as a chorus of adults and kids vocally put exclamation points […]
AUGUST IS FOR THE AUGUST By Peter Filichia
Now that August has arrived, let’s look at those who have been august on Broadway. Yes, August/august has two meanings. In Eight B.C., the Roman Senate honored its first emperor, one Augustus Caesar, by changing the month “Sextilis” to “Augustus.” It was later shortened to “August.” Along the way “august” also came to mean “someone […]
WHY A GREAT SONG WAS DROPPED FROM A GREAT MUSICAL By Peter Filichia
Last week we talked about TEVYA, the 1939 film version of the play TEVYA DER MILKHIKER by Sholom (or Sholem, depending on your source) Aleichem. Yes, TEVYA with an “A,” not Tevye with an “E” as we’re used to seeing it in Playbills and liner notes for FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. The Yiddish-language film’s subtitles […]
