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Remembering Cy Coleman in Book and Song

By Peter Filichia How do I know if a book on musical theater is worthwhile? If it gets me to play the cast albums that it cites in its pages. Listen to the Cy Coleman Songbook while you read along here. Andy Propst’s You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman did just […]

An American in Paris FINAL Cover

“GOOD HEAVENS! IT’S AN AMERICAN IN PARIS!””

By Peter Filichia March 20, 1952. RKO Pantages Theatre, Hollywood. The 24th Annual Academy Awards. Finally, it’s time for the Best Picture winner to be announced. Ever since the nominations were released five weeks earlier, some veteran film observers have been betting that the winner will be A Place in the Sun, the much-acclaimed adaptation […]

Zorba

ZORBAS GREEK TO ME

By Peter Filichia The recent Encores! production of Zorba reiterated what a marvelous score John Kander and Fred Ebb provided for their 1968 musical. Their second 1968 musical, if you want to get technical. Earlier in the year, they had given us The Happy Time, another magnificent series of songs. Not many teams can boast […]

The Roar Of The Greasepaint – The Smell Of The Crowd_1500x1500

IT SURELY ROARS, BUT CERTAINLY DOESN’T SMELL

By Peter Filichia Fifty years ago this week, after the lights went down at Broadway’s Shubert Theatre, the audience may well have recognized the first twenty-three notes of the Overture to The Roar of the Greasepaint — the Smell of the Crowd. They offered a preview of the song that had already been established as […]

If at First You Don't Succeed on Broadway ...

FLORA’S FIFTY!

By Peter Filichia It was hardly George Abbott’s first Broadway show. In fact, he already worked on or at least had his name on more than a hundred. But it certainly was the first Broadway effort for the musical’s star and songwriting team. All experienced bittersweet results from this musical called Flora, the Red Menace […]

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.