Skip to content

Blog

Sondheim_518032_cv_300ppi

My Essential Stephen Sondheim: Disc One By Peter Filichia

As I mentioned two Tuesdays ago, I can only imagine the anguish of those Sony executives who chose the thirty selections for the new two-CD retrospective The Essential Stephen Sondheim. True, the job had to be done, but how could they possibly choose so few and ignore so many others? I’m not saying that the […]

Sondheim_518032_cv_300ppi

Let’s Keep Celebrating Sondheim’s Eighty-Sixth Birthday By Peter Filichia

When Stephen Sondheim was growing up, “eighty-six” was a popular expression that meant “to throw out or get rid of.” Well, although Stephen Sondheim recently turned eighty-six, we here at Masterworks Broadway certainly aren’t interested in throwing out any of his work. But we ARE throwing some Sondheim your way in a nice two-disc collection […]

Sondheim_518032_cv_300ppi

Sample a Little Sondheim By Peter Filichia

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall after the Masterworks Broadway powers-that-be decided, “Yeah, let’s put out a compilation called The Essential Stephen Sondheim.” Yes, doing such would be a nice way of celebrating Mr. Stephen Sondheim’s 86th birthday. But saying that there would be an album called The Essential Stephen Sondheim was the […]

Guest Blog: 1956: IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR

Happy 60th, My Fair Lady By Peter Filichia

There are very few musicals that become so illustrious that they are soon referred to and recognized by their initials alone. ACL is one and POTO is another, but long before they came on the scene, there was MFL: My Fair Lady. (Get the new vinyl pressing here). Although the Soothsayer in Julius Caesar warned […]

Starting Here

STARTING HERE, STARTING NOW: THE REVUE THAT COULD By Peter Filichia

Can’t get to the York Theatre Company between March 12-20 to see Starting Here, Starting Now? That’s a shame – but there’s always the original cast album of the show originally known as The Theatre Songs of Maltby & Shire. That’s Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire. In the late ‘50s they met at Yale, […]

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.