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The Most Happy Fella – Original Broadway Cast Recording 1956

THE MOST HAPPY FELLA MEETS THE RICARDOS AND MERTZES By Peter Filichia

Sixty years ago this week, most of TV Nation heard these words: Lucy to Little Ricky: Mommy and Daddy are going to see a show with Uncle Fred and Aunt Ethel. Little Ricky: What show? Ricky: It’s called The Most Happy Fella. Little Ricky: Can I see it sometime? Lucy: You can see it when you […]

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Happy Forty-Seventh, Purlie! By Peter Filichia

Musicals that take place in earlier eras tend to be specific about their time frames. Barnum said in its program “1835 to 1880.” Annie stated “Dec. 11–25, 1933” and even 1776 didn’t feel its title gave enough information, so it declared “May 8 through” – of course – “July 4th.” The program for Purlie, however, […]

Labor Day Songs Spotify Playlist #MusicalMonday

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE ON OUR MINDS By Peter Filichia

Which of the hundreds of songs that Stephen Sondheim has written took him the least amount of time to complete? We’ll never know, but my supposition would be “No Life” from Sunday in the Park with George. You may assume I think this because it’s one of Sondheim’s shortest songs, clocking in at a mere […]

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The Debut of Everything Sondheim By Peter Filichia

Have you been missing The Sondheim Review as much as I? More than a year has passed since we saw this nifty publication, which has meant, to quote two certain princes, agony. How we loved reading about matters Sondheimian from A (Anyone Can Whistle, Assassins, and even that piece of juvenilia, All That Glitters) to […]

Dear World – 1969

A Second Chance to Appreciate Dear World By Peter Filichia

Here’s betting that people enjoy Dear World at the York Theater Company’s Musicals in Mufti this weekend much more than audiences did in 1969. Not just because it has a fine leading lady in Tyne Daly. After all, the original production had no less than Angela Lansbury, who, two years earlier, had won a Best […]

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.