Happy 50th Birthday, SWEET CHARITY By Peter Filichia
This Friday, January 29, I’ll step into the Palace Theatre to see An American in Paris. It’ll be precisely fifty years since I entered the Palace for the first time to see a musical. That was January 29, 1966, when a teenaged me attended the opening night of Sweet Charity. I bought an F 28 […]
I’m in the Middle on This by Peter Filichia
“Don’t you find it pretentious that so many writers, directors and performers today use their middle names?” This was the question not asked by Gilbert Gottfried, who does an entire five-minute routine complaining about “The Land of the Three-Named People. It was by a buddy whose anonymity I’ll protect by calling him John. And John […]
Remembering Elizabeth Swados by Peter Filichia
The first Broadway show she ever saw was The Boy Friend with Julie Andrews. “I thought it was phenomenal,” she said. So she became interested in musicals and community theater. “I was June in Gypsy,” she said with a smile. “To tell the truth, Gypsy may be my favorite of anything in the entire world.” […]
MERRILY IT MOVES ALONG By Peter Filichia
One of the nicest aspects to a New Year is that we all tend to look forward. It’s a policy to which creators of musicals have adhered for more than the last three-quarters of a century. In that time, Broadway lyricists have not only written funny songs or lovely ballads, but have also created numbers […]
Musical Theater’s New Year’s Resolutions By Peter Filichia
As I post this, it’s January 3, 2017, which means that in the past forty-eight hours you’ve broken your New Year’s Resolutions. Still, at nearly two days, that diet lasted longer many others you’ve attempted, didn’t it? Well, there’s still time to make some musical theater resolutions. If you’ve been saying “soundtrack” when you’re referring […]