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On Stage, Charlie Brown! by Peter Filichia

By Peter Filichia The Peanuts Movie had me remembering a feeling I’ve had for decades. Charlie Brown got away with murder. I don’t mean that Charles Schulz’s pie-faced cartoon character actually killed anyone. Although I do believe that if the kid ever did rub out Lucy van Pelt, a smart lawyer for the defense in “The […]

Guys and Dolls 1950 Movie Poster

GUYS AND DOLLS: THE GOLDEN AGE’S NEW GOLDEN AGER By Peter Filichia

GUYS AND DOLLS: THE GOLDEN AGE’S NEW GOLDEN AGER By Peter Filichia Turning sixty-five this week is one of the Broadway’s greatest musicals. Indeed, some say it’s the all-time greatest. Of course we’re talking about Guys and Dolls, which made its bow at the 46th Street Theatre on Nov. 24, 1950, not the 1992 revival […]

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STEVE – AS IN SONDHEIM? by Peter Filichia

By Peter Filichia If the play version of The Graduate could get an album, why shouldn’t Steve? The Graduate used snippets of ‘60s music during scene changes, so Columbia Legacy execs decided to issue an album of each song in its entirety. The fifteen tracks ranged from an easy listening waltz (“Moon River”) to a […]

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Beggar’s Can Be for You Choosers By Peter Filichia

Beggar’s Can Be for You Choosers By Peter Filichia Long before Forbidden Broadway’s Gerard Alessandrini put his own lyrics to existing melodies, John Gay (1685-1732) did the same with The Beggar’s Opera. Unlike Alessandrini, Gay didn’t center on songs from musicals – for the good reason that none existed at the time. What Gay did […]

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Forty Years, Forty Facts for A Chorus Line

By Peter Filichia Actually, the title of Tom Rowan’s A Chorus Line FAQ does prove once again that you can’t judge a book by its title. “FAQ,” of course, stands for “Frequent Asked Questions.” But Rowan doesn’t structure his book as questions and answers; he simply gives a straightforward account of how one of the […]

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.