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REMEMBERING BARBARA COOK By Peter Filichia 

We knew this day was coming for a while. On March 28, 2016, Barbara Cook announced – only sixteen days before she was to start performances of Barbara Cook: Then and Now at New World Stages – that she was “postponing indefinitely.” The official explanation was that finishing her memoir had taken a lot out […]

Inner City – 1971

Inner City Reborn By Peter Filichia 

I hope upon hope that you’re in New York City on Thursday, August 17th. If you’re not, I would urge you as strongly as Mark Bruckner commands Daisy Gamble in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever: “Take a train, steal a car, hop a freight, grab a star” – and get here. Catch […]

Masterworks Broadway will release the Encores! cast recording of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Starring Megan Hilty – Star of NBC’s Smash

Show Tunes for Friendship Day By Peter Filichia

As much as I enjoy Lorelei Lee – be she played by Carol Channing on the original 1949 cast album or Megan Hilty on the 2012 Encores! recording of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – the benign gold-digger will never convince me that “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” A person is. So let’s celebrate our friends […]

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A Celebration of Soft-Shoe By Peter Filichia

During this summer when the weather allows us to wear soft shoes instead of snow-fighting boots, shall we give some thought – as well as some listens – to some of musical theater’s best soft-shoe numbers? In alphabetical order : “Don’t Follow in My Footsteps” (The Goodbye Girl) – You wouldn’t necessarily expect a soft-shoe […]

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.