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MERRILY ROLLING AGAIN, ROLLING AGAIN By Peter Filichia

After the end of each song, no theatergoer shouted “Whooo!” None of the performers held a note for an inordinately long length of time, so no attendee was moved to scream at the halfway mark. Perhaps it was an off performance, you say? No, the applause after each song was hearty and commensurate with the […]

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THERE IS ALWAYS LITTLE ME By Peter Filichia

In a used bookshop in Morristown, New Jersey, I sauntered by the magazine section and gave out with a smile. Considering that the Life magazine that topped the pile was over 60 years old, it was in remarkable shape. After all, with its fold-over double cover, it had had twice as many opportunities to be […]

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NINA HIRSCHFELD’S FATHER’S NEWEST COLLECTION By Peter Filichia

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many does an Al Hirschfeld caricature rate? On the other hand, you may be speechless and offer none, after strolling through Memory Lane (and Shubert Alley) with THE AMERICAN THEATRE AS SEEN BY HIRSCHFELD 1962-2002. The man who was so important to Broadway (and points beyond) […]

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BEAU GOES TO THE MOVIES By Peter Filichia

Has this ever happened before? A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that YOUR OWN THING was the first off-Broadway musical to be optioned and sold for a film that was never made. But here’s BEAU, a musical that hasn’t even played off-Broadway – just Joe’s Pub – and yet actually was optioned, sold and […]

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BROADWAY IS MUSEUM QUALITY By Peter Filichia

No, it doesn’t offer quite a lotta Roman terra cotta or livin’ lava from the flanks of Etna that the eponymous title character of BARNUM had promised you. However, the Museum of Broadway is of more interest to us theater fans than his establishment ever could have been. Considering how crowded this 45th Street emporium has […]

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.