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Half a Sixpence

See Hilary Morning, Noon and Knight By Peter Filichia

Needless to say, we all savor certain scores, songs and performances on original, revival and studio cast albums. In Half a Sixpence, we love hearing Tommy Steele play that banjo in “Money to Burn.” Through Hallelujah, Baby! we see how song styles gradually changed in the first six decades of the twentieth century thanks to Jule […]

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Like Phil Connors, Make Every Day Groundhog Day By Peter Filichia

Never mind the lyric “Day after day after day after day after day after day” that Stephen Sondheim used twice in Merrily We Roll Along. If you really want to hear about someone’s “day after day after day after day after day after day,” here’s the original cast album of Groundhog Day – the new […]

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The Newest Dolly on the Newest Recording By Peter Filichia

Well, my heart is about to burst. My head is about to pop. Pardon me if my old spirit is showing. The reason is the new cast album of Hello, Dolly! with Bette Midler, David Hyde Pierce, Kate Baldwin and Gavin Creel. After Dolly Gallagher Levi and Horace Vandergelder have decided on marriage on Track […]

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THE GOLDEN APPLE – AT LAST By Peter Filichia

When Encores! executives began producing underappreciated musicals in 1994, Broadway aficionados started wondering “When are they going to do The Golden Apple?” For more than two decades, the announcement of every three-show season brought disappointment to many. “Why,” they asked “wasn’t the Jerome Moross–John Latouche masterpiece ever chosen?” Then last year, when artistic director Jack […]

The Making of No

Our Final April Quiz By Peter Filichia

We’re nearing the finish line of April – also known as National Quiz Month. That’s why I’ve been spending the last three Tuesdays – and this one, too – giving you a quiz that asks you to identify lines and lyrics from various Broadway and off-Broadway musicals. Last week, the quiz centered on relatives. Scoring […]

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.