Blog

By Peter Filichia   What a nice event at the Spiral Theatre Studio last Wednesday night. At Richard Skipper Celebrates, a chat-series helmed by the eponymous raconteur, the ever-charming Anita Gillette was the subject.   Granted, most Americans may remember Gillette from her 20,000 appearances on The $20,000 Pyramid and other game shows. Daytime mavens […]

By Peter Filichia   All right, most of us don’t like the semi-recent phenomenon of “jukebox musicals.” And yet, we must admit that far more often than not such shows spur entertaining original cast albums. Maintaining this tradition is Bullets over Broadway.   Woody Allen’s 1994 film – which insisted that a true artist will […]

By Peter Filichia   So many of us who are crying out for original musicals are doubly grateful for If/Then – because it gives us two of them.   Bookwriter-lyricist Brian Yorkey doesn’t limit himself to a single story when dealing with Elizabeth (Idina Menzel). Just as A Little Night Music has often been called […]

By Peter Filichia   On Friday, May 16, when the Dow Jones average hit 16,491, I interviewed the woman who’d hundreds of times said that the Dow had hit 1,000.   She was lying. But that was Marlyn Mason’s job in How Now, Dow Jones. She was Kate, “The Voice of Dow Jones” who went […]

By Peter Filichia Even a splendid production of Allegro, such as the one that Tom Wojtunik is delivering right now at The Astoria Performing Arts Center, reveals a show that really should be heard and not seen.  Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first failure has a terrific score. Many of us suspected as much in the latter […]