"Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit and the Biggest Flop of the Season - 1959 to 2009" by Peter Filichia

[phantom39]

Posted: 9/30/10 at 8:03pm

Was wondering if anyone picked up "Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit and the Biggest Flop of the Season - 1959 to 2009" by Peter Filichia yet?

It looks like it has the potential to be the next "Not Since Carrie" covering some "newer" flops that opened after 1990.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1423495624?ie=UTF8&tag=broadcaptu-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1423495624

[once a month]

Posted: 10/1/10 at 10:02am

I'm currently reading this book. I'm enjoying it as much as I did 'Not Since Carrie'. That thought raced through my mind as I began getting into this read more and more. I can heartily recommend it, if you love reading about Broadway.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 10/1/10 at 10:03am

I completed forget this came out!! Barnes and Noble, here I come!

[Mattbrain]

Posted: 10/1/10 at 10:45am

Looks like he's covering The Capeman.

[Amalia Balash]

Posted: 10/1/10 at 2:15pm

Just ordered it from Amazon!

[twinbelters]

Posted: 10/2/10 at 5:55pm

I want this right this instant, but will have to hold off til I find something to bundle it with to get free shipping. Also, I have a $25 gift certificate coming from Amazon.

So it's good? What are the musicals covered? Anything particularly surprising? Are there any flops from before the 90s that weren't covered in Not Since Carrie?

[phantom39]

Posted: 10/4/10 at 7:12pm

Thanks! I think i'll be getting this one.

[phantom39]

Posted: 10/26/10 at 4:59pm

Halfway through, and i'm so glad I got this; such a great read.

[Logan2]

Posted: 10/30/10 at 11:12am

Author will be at the Queens Library- Broadway 40-20 Broadway, see website:

Queens Library

[bdboston]

Posted: 10/30/10 at 3:51pm

It's an o.k. read, but I'm really disappointed by the number of inaccuracies in many of his entries. Kind of takes away from his "authority" on the subject matter.

[Edna Turnblad]

Posted: 10/30/10 at 4:01pm

What sort of inaccuracies?

[leefowler]

Posted: 10/30/10 at 4:39pm

I found several errors as I was reading it, although the only one I remember is that Peter seems to think that Jeff McCarthy was the original Beast in BATB (it was Terrance Mann)

Also, Peter has a disconcerting way of expressing opinions as fact. He declares that "Sunrise, Sunset" is the biggest hit to come out of a 60's musical...Because it's played often at weddings. That's the only evidence he offers. In his chapter on "The Producers", he mostly talks about the unsuccessful Toronto company, and then states that "no smash-hit musical fell from so high a perch to so low a rung in so short a time" (although the show ran 6 1/2 years, had two successful touring companies, and a London company that won the Olivier award for best musical)

Often, in his choices about what constitutes the biggest "hit" or "flop" in a certain year, he'll often make some strange choices, based on (I assume) which shows he wants to write about. For 1965-1966, he's decided that the biggest flop is a show called "Little World, Hello", a show that never even made it out of rehearsals. By that criterion, any show that's had workshops without making it into production ("Kicks" comes to mind, although there are many others) would somehow constitute the biggest flop of the year.

I enjoy Peter's columns, but this book reads like it was written in a hurry.

[bdboston]

Posted: 10/30/10 at 4:50pm

Factual errors abound, much like what's shared previously with Jeff McCarthy/"Beauty and the Beast." In the same "Beauty/Beast" section, he says things like the show "arrived at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre" - whereas it actually opened at the Palace, only moving to the Lunt-Fontanne years later to make room for AIDA. He then says Gaston is played by "Brent Moses," but the actor's name is Burke. It's careless stuff like this - scattered throughout the book - that knocked Mr. Filichia down a few rungs in my opinion.
Updated On: 10/30/10 at 04:50 PM

[Mattbrain]

Posted: 10/30/10 at 6:14pm

There's mistakes like that in his first edition of Let's Put On A Musical too.

[Mattbrain]

Posted: 1/5/11 at 3:11pm

I read some of this the other day in Barnes and Noble and I do not like it at all. I find it has a very condescending tone.

[twinbelters]

Posted: 1/5/11 at 3:37pm

I'm enjoying it, but I will say I am shocked at the amount of editing this book still needs. There are far too many typos.

Glad to have it in my library!

[TonyVincent]

Posted: 1/5/11 at 5:43pm

Out of curiosity, what does he say were the biggest hits/flops for the last couple years?

[Square Peg2]

Posted: 1/6/11 at 7:32am

I finished reading this a couple of weeks ago and was incredibly disappointed. Beyond the factual errors, the typographical/grammatical errors (especially in the first hundred pages) are so frustrating. And, as others have said, he often asserts his opinion as fact. I'm not familiar with his other work, but I found many of his ideas bizarre. As one example, he suggested that Taboo would not have been such a flop if it had been staged at Circle in the Square. Huh? He completely ignored the media circus that surrounded the show, not to mention its many other problems.

I ordered a few seminal theatre books alongside Filichia's, and am cuurently reading The Season. With such a direct comparison, I can't help but wonder if Filichia was attempting to reproduce Goldman's clever and honest tone, yet he's not quite up for it (like I said, I'm not familiar with his other work - I'm sure he knows much more about theatre than I do).