DROPPED ON THE TOWN By Peter Filichia
I was horrified that Saturday afternoon in the Majestic Theatre before CAMELOT was about to start. I’d reached the page in the Playbill where the songs were listed and saw the terrible mistake. This was late in the show’s original run, months after I’d bought the cast album. By then, I had listened incessantly and […]

BEFORE THE TONYS WENT NATIONAL By Peter Filichia
It’s a statistic that surprised me when I first read it. The main reason that people watch the Tonys is not to discover who’ll win, but to see the numbers from nominated shows. I was only surprised for a second, for then I remembered that people who were living some distance from New York in […]
TEN AT THE LUNT-FONTANNE By Peter Filichia
I’d planned this week to be at Ten Chimneys in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin. (You know why I had to cancel my trip.) Never heard of the place? It’s where famed acting couple Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne called home. They were fond of fireplaces, and had no fewer than ten of them. And just as […]

THE BEST LAID PLANS By Peter Filichia
God bless Richard Norton. Since his parents took him to see JENNIE during its 1963 tryout at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, Richard has been an avid musical theatre enthusiast. Not only did he start seeing every musical that he could both in Boston and on Broadway, but he also bought any recording whose cover […]

TWO YEARS, TWO BEST MUSICAL TONYS By Peter Filichia
Before we say goodbye to May, let’s remember Richard Adler, who liked to say, “May is my favorite month.” Adler wrote six musicals for Broadway, but the two that became household-name hits opened in what were very merry months of May for him. Better still, they opened in successive years, within 357 days of each […]