Skip to content

Blog

Harry-Potter-Cursed-Child-Imogean-Heap-Masterworks-Broadway

HARRY POTTER AND THE VINYL ISSUE By Peter Filichia

Extra! Extra! Hey, look at the headline that just might be on the front page of The Daily Prophet. “HARRY POTTER” SCORE NOW ON VINYL! We’re talking about THE MUSIC OF HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD (PARTS ONE AND TWO). Imogen Heap’s much-acclaimed score won her the 2017-2018 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music […]

Secret Diary of Adrian Mole

UNCOVERING ADRIAN MOLE’S SECRETS By Peter Filichia

It’s often been said that the first sign of truly growing up occurs when people ask your age and you stop adding “and a half” to the figure. Adrian Mole hadn’t yet reached that point, as you can tell from the title of the British musical THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE, AGED 13 ¾. […]

ANNIE_cast_phC

Martin Charnin’s Legacy By Peter Filichia

Broadway will never forget Martin Charnin, for he had the idea of making a musical about Little Orphan Annie. When recruiting a librettist, he believed a humor writer who’d never had experience with musicals could do it. Thomas Meehan not only won a Tony for the book of ANNIE, but also eventually captured the same […]

Promenade

PROMENADE: NOW THAT’S OFF-BROADWAY By Peter Filichia

Here’s a musical that Moliere and Eugene Ionesco might have loved. It’s also one that Kurt Weill could have written had he lived nineteen years longer and had moved off-Broadway. Its song “The Clothes Make the Man” is a title worthy of Weill’s longtime collaborator Bertolt Brecht. Such is the world of PROMENADE, which is […]

Museum of Broadway

SARDI’S: OUR INFORMAL BROADWAY MUSEUM By Peter Filichia

We heard last month that some time in 2020 there’ll be a Museum of Broadway in Times Square. Good! Wonderful! Terrific! But in the meantime, let’s not overlook the Broadway Museum that’s been around for almost a hundred years. Sardi’s. Well, the number of caricatures on its walls probably does outnumber the artifacts in many […]

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.