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Guest Blog: 1956: IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR

Guest Blog: 1956: IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR

By David Foil In the history of Broadway musicals, there are great years, vintage years, golden years. And then there is 1956. Fans may argue this – 1959 was a pretty amazing year, as well – but was there ever such a brief time in which so many expertly crafted, entertaining and unforgettable musicals made […]

That Toddlin' Town -- and Terrific Musical

That Toddlin’ Town — and Terrific Musical

by Peter Filichia Thirty-five years ago this week, Chicago opened in the era when the New York Times was still the be-all and end-all. If the Times daily critic Clive Barnes could like it, it was almost assured to be a hit. If Walter Kerr, its Sunday critic, approved as well, it would be virtually […]

A Tale of Two Finians

A Tale of Two Finians

By Peter Filichia Not often does a musical run 12 performances and get a cast album. But that’s what happened to a show that RCA Victor recorded 50 years ago this week: The 1960 revival of Finian’s Rainbow. Actually, the production could be said to have run a little longer than that – 28 performances, […]

Guest Blog: Mining the Catalogue - How Show Tunes Take Center Stage

Guest Blog: Mining the Catalogue – How Show Tunes Take Center Stage

By David Foil Talk to any of us who work at MasterworksBroadway.com, and one of the first things you’ll hear about is the “catalogue” – how unique it is, how definitive it is, how huge it is. And it is all of those things. The more you read our blogs and become acquainted with Masterworks […]

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.