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Martin Charnin’s Legacy By Peter Filichia

Broadway will never forget Martin Charnin, for he had the idea of making a musical about Little Orphan Annie. When recruiting a librettist, he believed a humor writer who’d never had experience with musicals could do it. Thomas Meehan not only won a Tony for the book of ANNIE, but also eventually captured the same […]

Promenade

PROMENADE: NOW THAT’S OFF-BROADWAY By Peter Filichia

Here’s a musical that Moliere and Eugene Ionesco might have loved. It’s also one that Kurt Weill could have written had he lived nineteen years longer and had moved off-Broadway. Its song “The Clothes Make the Man” is a title worthy of Weill’s longtime collaborator Bertolt Brecht. Such is the world of PROMENADE, which is […]

Museum of Broadway

SARDI’S: OUR INFORMAL BROADWAY MUSEUM By Peter Filichia

We heard last month that some time in 2020 there’ll be a Museum of Broadway in Times Square. Good! Wonderful! Terrific! But in the meantime, let’s not overlook the Broadway Museum that’s been around for almost a hundred years. Sardi’s. Well, the number of caricatures on its walls probably does outnumber the artifacts in many […]

The Sound of Music – Broadway Revival 1998

THE SOUND OF GOD-KNOWS-WHAT By Peter Filichia

So what does this sentence remind you of? “She spread out her arms and spun in circle after circle, her face toward the sun, her short hair ruffling in the light breeze, a radiant smile plastered on her face.” Julie Andrews in THE SOUND OF MUSIC, right? Yes – but these specific words come from […]

42nd Street - Original Broadway Cast Recording

42ND STREET COMES TO YOUR STREET by Peter Filichia

You’ve either been enjoying the original cast album of 42nd STREET for a while – or you still have that pleasure in your future. Whatever the case, you’ll now have a chance to enhance your 42nd STREET experience by catching The Broadway HD broadcast of the recent London revival. You can stream it (as well […]

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.