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Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd Added to Library of Congress Recordings Collection

Women’s History Month On Broadway

By Peter Filichia Now that we’ve celebrated February and Black History Month, let’s move to March, which is Women’s History Month. Listen to the playlist I created to go along with your reading here. Readers are encouraged to spend each day of the month playing a song or score that features a great female star […]

Goodtime Charley – Original Broadway Cast Recording 1975

Musical Theater AdvicE

By Peter Filichia   Did you know that February 18 is National Advice Day?   Probably not. But someone decided it is.   Perhaps a musical theater lyricist invented the “holiday.” When you think of it, many of these craftsmen have been dispensing good advice for quite some time. Put on a happy face. You […]

The Wrong-Note Rag

The Wrong-Note Rag

By Peter Filichia   Faithful readers will recall that two weeks ago I mentioned that I preferred “Together Wherever We Go” on the 1973 London Cast Album of Gypsy. Because it offers all of Sondheim’s lyrics, the cut is nearly a minute longer than it is on the 1959 Original Cast Album.   Many who […]

BLACK HISTORY MONTH ON BROADWAY

BLACK HISTORY MONTH ON BROADWAY

By Peter Filichia   Time does fly, does it not? Already more than one twelfth of the “new” year in gone, and now we’re already in Black History Month.   I trust that on Sunday, February 1, you started celebrating by playing Street Scene, for on this date in 1902, its librettist, Langston Hughes was […]

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Characters

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Characters

By Peter Filichia   While at Barnes & Noble to get Jeremy Aufderheide’s How the Wiz Was, my eye fell on Stephen Covey’s best-seller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Well, a little bit of self-help never hurt anybody, so I picked it up and skimmed. Habit One deals with “moving from dependence to […]

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.