Blog

By Peter Filichia Just spent a delightful week at The College of Wooster (Ohio) where Ohio Light Opera presented three operettas and four musicals. The latter category included one of 1926’s biggest hits: Oh, Kay!   It has a book by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, but much more significantly, music by George Gershwin and […]

By Peter Filichia After I’d finished a recent lecture to a group of young musical theater students, one of them approached me and said “I’ve got a question. In ‘Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love’ in A Chorus Line, when that singer says that he was ‘Locked in the bathroom with Peyton Place,’ do you […]

By Peter Filichia Sure, listen to Sondheim’s “Uptown/Downtown” (cut from Follies) and you’ll be astonished by the rhymes and wordplay. Pull out E.Y. Harburg’s “When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love” (from Finian’s Rainbow) and you’ll be equally dazzled. These are the easy lyrics to admire. But what about the ones that pass by […]

A LIST OF LIST SONGS By Peter Filichia In The Mikado, KoKo sings “I’ve Got a Little List,” a song that premiered in 1885 and opened the floodgates for 130 years of “list songs” that would be written for the musical theater. I’ve got a little list, too – one that cites the list songs […]

By Peter Filichia How well I remember entering the downstairs lobby at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2000 and seeing the two signs – one of which surprised me. Oh, by then, we’d all become accustomed to “A gunshot will be heard during this performance,” but here was a new one: “Herbal cigarettes are used […]