The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from The New Yorker

So, there I was sitting in my dentist’s office chuckling, chortling and laughing out loud as I read this book. It isn’t often that I enjoy a trip to the dentist this much. It wasn’t a dose of laughing gas that had me chortling. It was the writing of Wolcott Gibbs, most of which had been published in “The New Yorker” between 1928 and his death in 1958. [Read more...]

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to The Phantom of the Opera was expected to open in London in 2010 and then have a Broadway transfer. It did open in London, but the reception wasn’t strong enough to earn it a Broadway transfer. However, an Australian production under a new director with a revised book was mounted last year. [Read more...]

This is a disc that may be of more interest intellectually than aesthetically for American fans of musical theatre. It is a classic illustration of a basic truth of the musical theatre – Broadway and London’s West End are more than 3,470 miles away from each other. They span a gap greater than the crow can fly. [Read more...]

Let’s see. Should I do a recording review of this CD of 29 songs by the man who wrote the memorable songs for the sparkling movie “Meet Me In St. Louis” and Broadway’s “Improbable Musical Comedy” High Spirits? [Read more...]

Most dedicated theater music fans are well aware that there was a momentous shift in the evolution of what we now think of as a “musical” in 1915 when Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton, in the cogent description of Steve Suskin, “concentrated on making comedy and song spring directly from situation and character” with their first hit in the Princess Theatre, Very Good Eddie. [Read more...]

The pickings from the Bell Telephone Hour that Video Artists International delves into must be getting slim. It isn’t that the material on latest releases in VAI’ Music’s series isn’t first rate. Indeed, there are some tasty morsels in these collections of musical segments from the ten year run of that television variety show which Donald Voorhees conducted between 1959 and 1968. [Read more...]

I may be excused for presuming that, if you have a theater shelf, it already sports a copy of Steven Suskin’s book. Equal parts reliable reference book and entertainingly written opinionated history, your shelf may have the first edition from 1985 when it instantly became indispensable as the book to check for quick information on any one of 30 of Broadway’s best composers. [Read more...]

Few scores establish their “voice” quite as rapidly as does the score for this poorly titled but highly intriguing one-act musical that had its Off-Broadway premiere in 2010. [Read more...]

Do you look for ravishing romantic beauty in your musicals? If so, Maury Yeston is probably on your list of favorite composers. Think of “Only With You” (Nine), “We’ll Meet Tomorrow” (Titanic) or “Love Can’t Happen” (Grand Hotel). If you are a regular follower of this column and took my advice last February, think of “I Will Paint Sounds” from Goya … A Life in Song. [Read more...]

Filichia has done it again

What is a reviewer to do when a book shows up for review that has a pull quote from him praising the author to high heaven? Is it a conflict of interest to praise the new volume as well?

When Peter Filichia’s newest book hit my desk I was presented with this conundrum. What to do? [Read more...]