Remembering a Most Famous Date in Music
By Peter Filichia — Sunday, February 9, 1964. Now more than fifty years have passed, but most everyone who was then alive and beyond the age of reason remembers it well. Up until then, when people spoke of “The British Invasion,” they’d meant that fourteen-mile ride that Paul Revere made on horseback from his home […]
There Is Always Little Me
By Peter Filichia — How many musicals that played only seven months on Broadway ever see two major Manhattan revivals and a snazzy concert version? But as of this week, Little Me, which originally played 257 performances, can boast of its fourth major showcase in New York. On Wednesday and going through the weekend, it […]
Happy Anniversary, Edmund Kean!
By Peter Filichia — Two hundred years ago this week, a star was born. Edmund Kean was a journeyman actor until January 26, 1814. On that night, he played Shylock at the Drury Lane, London’s most famous theater. His portrayal of Shakespeare’s sometimes-victimized and sometimes-vicious Jew in The Merchant of Venice made him the 19th […]
When West Side Story Was Romeo
The most fascinating letter replicated in the recently published The Leonard Bernstein Letters isn’t one solely by Leonard Bernstein. The undated letter – suspected by editor Nigel Simeone to have been written shortly before Oct. 18, 1955 – was a collaboration between Bernstein and Arthur Laurents. We can infer that the latter, the eventual bookwriter […]
A Li’l Bit of L’il Abner
In 1956, long before comic strip icons Superman, Charlie Brown and Annie became lead characters in Broadway musicals, there was Li’l Abner. Al Capp’s famed comic strip about the rustic inhabitants of Dogpatch, U.S.A. began in 1934 and continued into 1977. Thus, a little more than halfway into the run, Broadway got to meet Li’l […]
