Peter Filichia Has the Nicest Friends -

By Bart Greenberg***Writer-critic and raconteur Peter Filichia returned to 54 Below for a new entry in his series Peter Filichia and Friends: Broadway Tales and Tunes. He assembled a terrific group of actors to deliver a delightful collection of standards and rarities in the Broadway canon, interspersed with the host’s wisely brief personal recollections and theatrical anecdotes about the material. Beautifully balanced and with a satisfying speed, it was a charming evening. Praise also is due to music director Michael Lavine, who seamlessly accompanied a wide range of singers and their material.

After confessing an idiocracy of storing his cast recordings by their number of Broadway performances, these statistics became a running joke through the evening. The first performers introduced were real-life married couple William Parry and Maureen Silliman, who offered the title song from Camelot (Alan Jay Lerner,Frederick Loewe), complete with the surrounding scene. This episode defined charm and wit. Then Adam Grupper offered a practiced and detailed “If I Were a Rich Man” (Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick). Dick Scanlan followed with a touching tribute to the late Gavin Creel, before performing a surprisingly spritely “So Far” (Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II).

Gerard Alessandrini saluted several of the celebrity cast replacements in the revival of Chicago with a clever version of “Razzle Dazzle” (John Kander, Fred Ebb), and lighting struck twice when Karen Akers recreated her original performance in Grand Hotel with “What You Need,” with Alex Rybeck at the piano. Another even rarer original cast performance followed with the charming Neva Small (soon to be in the J2 production of Milk and Honey) who delivered a terrific torch song, “A Girl With Too Much Heart” (Bob Merril), paying tribute to her “two Bobs” —the songwriter and leading man Robert Preston.

Two “confessions” from Rupert Holmes’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood included the number most often utilized: Jasper’s, performed by Paul Adam Schefer), and the one least used: Durdle’s, impersonated by Robert Creighton. )—both delivered with a great deal of character flavor. For something very different, from the Off-Broadway world, performer-composer Steve Schalchlin, with his collaborator Blake Zolfo offered their bittersweet “My New York Life.” Moving into something much sillier, Alessandrini returned as the Phantom to receive some mentoring from the ghost of Ethel Merman (the irrepressible Christine Pedi) to the melody of Irving Berlin’s “counterpoint” song, “(I Wonder Why) You’re Just in Love”.

Another rarity was delivered by the immensely talented Aeja Barrows: “Deep in the Night” (Helen Miller, Eve Merriam) to great effect. Pedi returned to stop the show with the challenging, convoluted and very funny “Babette” (Cy Coleman, Betty Comden and Adolph Green). To close this very entertaining evening, A.J. Shively assured us all that it was “The Best of Times” (Jerry Herman).