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THEY WERE MAID FOR MUSICALS By Peter Filichia

“Hell, I’d even play the maid to be in a show.” So sings Hattie Walker in FOLLIES on the last night of the Weissman Theatre’s existence, reprising the number that she had sung many years before. Playing a maid does seem to be the lowest of all theatrical assignments. ALLEGRO, BELLS ARE RINGING, CALL ME […]

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Here Are the Answers! By Peter Filichia

Last week I gave you some trivia questions and brainteasers from the podcast I do most every Sunday on www.broadwayradio.com . Every question I detailed involved a musical whose cast album, be it an original and/or a revival, can be found here at Masterworks Broadway. Just in case you were flummoxed by the questions or […]

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Broadway Radio Trivia By Peter Filichia

Most every Sunday, I record a podcast on broadwayradio.com , usually with my colleague Michael Portantiere and always with our host James Marino. Some years after we started doing it, James had the idea of me asking either a trivia question or a brainteaser at the end of each show. It’s turned out to be […]

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DESPERATE MEASURES Measures Up By Peter Filichia

“These are desperate times, Mrs. Lovett, and desperate measures are called for.” So says Sweeney Todd to his soon-to-be-partner-in-culinary-crime. The times we’re now living in may or may not be desperate depending on your point-of-view, but there’s no question that in these days of musical theater, DESPERATE MEASURES is called for. Not “are” called for, but “is” called for, […]

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JEROME ROBBINS’ BROADWAY Is Alive and Well By Peter Filichia 

I’ve often felt bad for musical theater aficionados who were born after 1991. Ditto to the ones who only became interested in this art form after that year came and went. For I’ve assumed that if these young‘uns have the goal of seeing a production of every Tony-winning musical — and which of us does […]

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.