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Chita the Achiever

Chita the Achiever

By Peter Filichia – We have two important anniversaries this week, both as the result of West Side Story. It’s celebrating its 54th year of never being out of the public consciousness since its Sept. 26, 1957 debut. Thus, it was 54 years ago this week that Broadway officially took notice of a performer who […]

Guest Blog: Lorrie Davis on Tom O’Horgan

Guest Blog: Lorrie Davis on Tom O’Horgan

In celebration of the release of Divine Hair/Mass in F, Lorrie Davis from the original Broadway cast of Hair shares some memories about the show’s director Tom O’Horgan. Lorrie Davis on Tom O’Horgan The first time I met Tom O’Horgan, I was auditioning for the original cast of the Broadway musical Hair. He was sitting […]

A Tale of Two Fiddler Songs

A Tale of Two Fiddler Songs

By Peter Filichia — As we celebrate the 47th anniversary of Fiddler on the Roof this week (on Sept. 22, to be precise), let’s take a look at its most famous song — and one of its least famous songs. In 1964, when Fiddler debuted at the Imperial, Broadway was still in the era when […]

Lehman Engel 101

Lehman Engel 101

By Peter Filichia — We might not have had Avenue Q, A Chorus Line, Nine, Once on This Island and Ragtime and plenty of other excellent musicals without him. He was Lehman Engel, who was the musical director for thirty Broadway shows, the vocal arranger for fourteen, and the composer of incidental musical for sixteen […]

Godspell's Discs from Stage and Screen

Godspell’s Discs from Stage and Screen

By Peter Filichia — There are many wonderful aspects to the “40th Anniversary Celebration” of Godspell. How often is an original cast album (of the landmark 1971 off-Broadway production) offered along with the soundtrack album (of the 1973 film version)? But here’s what might be the best aspect of this pairing of two different recordings […]

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.