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Masterworks Broadway has found an excellent way to celebrate the recent 50th anniversary of Sweet Charity’s opening. It’s re-released another fine recording of the Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields score. The 1967 London cast album offers Juliet Prowse in the role that in 1966 brought Gwen Verdon her fifth straight Tony nomination (and her first loss — […]

So how are we celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Robinson Crusoe, Jr.? The musical that opened at the Winter Garden on Feb. 17, 1916 was a riff on Daniel Defoe’s famous 1719 novel. Although Defoe’s work would ultimately become simply known as Robinson Crusoe, its actual title was substantially longer. Take a deep breath now: […]

Since the advent of Presidents’ Day in the ‘80s, not much has been made of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. There was a time when Americans were very much aware that the sixteenth President of the United States had been born on February 12. Oh, it was never as big a deal as George Washington’s birthday ten […]

When Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was all the rage in 1967, many listeners were very glad that “Within You, Without You” was the first song on the second side. These people, who weren’t fond of the song’s Hindustani sound, found it easier to position the needle on the second song on the second […]

This Friday, January 29, I’ll step into the Palace Theatre to see An American in Paris. It’ll be precisely fifty years since I entered the Palace for the first time to see a musical. That was January 29, 1966, when a teenaged me attended the opening night of Sweet Charity. I bought an F 28 […]