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George M! -- Born on the Third of July

George M! — Born on the Third of July

By Peter Filichia — Ostriches do not hide their heads in the sand. Bulls are not enraged by the color red. And George M. Cohan (1878-1942), despite what he wrote in “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” was not “born on the 4th of July.” Actually he came into the world some hours earlier. Lord knows how many […]

Evita 2012: Let’s Hear It for the Rainbow Tour

Evita 2012: Let’s Hear It for the Rainbow Tour

By Peter Filichia – Che misinformed you about Eva Peron. Your queen is indeed coming back to you, thanks to the 2012 revival cast album of Evita, now available on Masterworks Broadway. We have Ricky Martin, the former Menudo star, as Che – not Guevara, as bookwriter-lyricist Tim Rice and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber have […]

Comedy Tonight (And Every Night This Summer)

Comedy Tonight (And Every Night This Summer)

By Peter Filichia — Summertime, and the livin’ is supposed to be fun. None of the other three seasons is as associated with good times. In honor of the impending summer, I thought I’d assemble a list of The Broadway Musical’s 50 Funniest Songs. Remember: sense of humor is very subjective. My former wife is […]

Hallelujah, Baby_0

Baby, It Won the Tony, Too

By Peter Filichia — With the Tony Awards® and Once fresh in our minds, let’s at least once talk about a Tony-winner that isn’t always fresh in our minds: Hallelujah, Baby! It opened on April 25, 1967 and only ran 293 performances at the Martin Beck (now the Hirschfeld). Back then, April 15 was the […]

The Best Musicals That the Tonys Missed

The Best Musicals That the Tonys Missed

By Peter Filichia — And now, the end is near, as we approach the final curtain on our five-part series on people involved with Broadway musicals who got skunked by the Tony nominators. Just as every entertainment awards ceremony does, we first listed the supporting actors and actresses. Then we moved on to the leading […]

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.