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You enter the theater to see a musical without knowing the score – and then discover songs you Love at First Hear. With a revival, thanks to your previous spins of the original or studio cast album, you know the score inside out before you enter the theater. You can tell what songs are coming […]

I’ll offer half-hearted congratulations to Cara Mund, the first Miss North Dakota to become Miss America. My reservation? As part of the pageant’s Talent Competition, she didn’t sing a song from a Broadway musical. So with me, Mund’s name is Mud. To be fair, Mund was brave in defying the advice given by “Pageant Center,” […]

“The Music Man – what else?” So says Jeffrey Sheldrake in the 1960 Oscar-winning Best Picture The Apartment. The quip comes after he’s just handed over his theater tickets to Chuck Baxter, who then asked what Broadway show he’d be seeing. In 1959, fifty-eight years ago this week, on September 12th right here in front […]

Will Encores! ever do Wildcat? The 1960 musical is most famous for bringing Lucille Ball to Broadway, but it should also be remembered for its marvelous score. This was the initial collaboration for composer Cy Coleman and lyricist Carolyn Leigh – and the first time that each had a show in which every song was […]

Given that August 29th is “National Chop Suey Day,” whom do we thank for inventing this succulent dish that has graced many a Column A and Column B? Should it be Qing Dynasty premier Li Hongzhang’s chef, who whipped it up during their visit to America in the late 1800s? A 19th century Chinese chef […]