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Can You Say The Zulu and the Zayda?

Can You Say The Zulu and the Zayda?

By Peter Filichia – Might you indulge me in a personal story? It’s Tuesday, Nov. 9, 1965 around 5 p.m., and I’m returning home from school — but not before I stop at Harvard University’s “Coop” in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For some time now, I’ve been treating myself to an original cast album every payday, and […]

A New "Twelve Days of Christmas"

A New “Twelve Days of Christmas”

By Peter Filichia — It may be the song that many people most dread during the holiday season: “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” For one thing, the song is certainly is longer than “Rumson Creek” in Paint Your Wagon — and perhaps even longer than “Soliloquy” from Carousel. How about twelve different musical theater Christmas […]

40 Reasons to Be Thankful

40 Reasons to Be Thankful

By Peter Filichia — Thanksgiving is upon us, so let’s get in a thankful mood. Here’s hoping that you indeed have a great deal for which to be thankful: health, relatives, friends, a job you like, financial security and enough leisure time. Let’s also be thankful for the music that has filled our lives and […]

GUEST BLOG: Jim Wann Remembers Pump Boys

GUEST BLOG: Jim Wann Remembers Pump Boys

Jim Wann, the principal author and composer of Pump Boys and Dinettes, writes about the creation of the popular show. PUMP BOYS AND DINETTES began with nary a thought of Broadway. I was a scuffling songwriter/guitarist and Mark Hardwick was a piano player/actor. We had performed in a production of my first musical, DIAMOND STUDS: […]

You Must Meet My Wife and Life

A Delicious Chocolate Soldier

By Peter Filichia — Long before one play by George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion) became a musical (My Fair Lady in 1956), there was another: GBS’s 1894 play Arms and the Man which became the Oscar Straus operetta The Chocolate Solider opened in his hometown of Vienna in 1908, on Broadway in 1909, and in London […]

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.