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Three wonderful scores and a trio of Tony-winning performances were first – or last – heard on Broadway a full fifty years ago. January 18, 1968 was the opening of The Happy Time, the first of two Kander and Ebb scores that would debut that year. Zorba would be the other. It may be Kander […]

“L&M to Lucky Strike.” So goes a lyric in “Here’s Love,” the title song from Meredith Willison’s 1963 musicalization of Miracle on 34th Street. I listen to it every holiday season, for it takes place during the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas — and I’ve always adored its title song. “Here’s Love” is first and […]

Spent the last week of December listening to Mame. I always do, and not because of “We Need a Little Christmas,” fun though it is. But the final week of December is when Mame Dennis is most accurate when she sings in her opening song (“It’s Today”) “And though it’s far from the first of […]

They couldn’t wait for the thirtieth anniversary so they made certain that they saw each just before the twenty-ninth. From the way that they performed the solid Legs Diamond score at two reunion concerts at Feinstein’s/54 Below, you would have never guessed that the musical that had debuted on Dec. 26, 1988 had been a […]

So does Hugh Jackman’s appearing as The Greatest Showman in the current movie musical remind you of a Broadway show? Yes, me too: Barnum, the 1980 hit musical that spent twenty-five months at the St. James Theatre. Both properties do indeed concern Phineas T. Barnum (1810-1891) who was famous for saying “There Is a Sucker […]