It’s an honor to bring Peter Filichia’s column every week on Kritzerland called ‘Filichia on Friday’ to our readers on DCMetroTheaterArts.
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Take The 2015 Broadway University Mid-Term Exam-Answers Due in by February 3rd!
While the musical is an inherently American art form, it hasn’t neglected other nationalities – as is proved by the 50 examples that make up this year’s Broadway University Mid-Term Exam.
Here are 50 lines and lyrics that graced musicals produced between 1930 to 2014. They include both Broadway and off-Broadway shows, and are listed in the order that they opened.
All entries are due by Tuesday, February 3 at 11:59 p.m. at [email protected]. May you be as lucky as the Irish in solving this mid-term.
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1. “You and you alone bring out the Gypsy in me.”
2. “Give it back to the birds and bees and the Viennese.”
3. “Mother’s a Swede and father’s a Scot and so Irish I’m not and never have been.”
4. “If in Lesbos, a pure Lesbian can.”
5. “Then he’d make his usual reply: that old reliable Andalusian rhyme.”
6. “The kind of confection to drive a man out of his Mesopotamian mind.”
7. “Italians hate Yugoslavs; South Africans hate the Dutch.”
8. “And furthermore, the Pygmy tribes in Africa may have a war.”
9. “Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.”
10. “Napkin on the floor, ashes in the cup and one Canadian dime.”
11. “‘Cuz every Puerto-Rican’s a lousy chicken.”
12. “Even if you can quote Balzac and Shakespeare and all them other hi-falutin’ Greeks.”
13. “A stately Scandanavian type; a buxom, blue-eyed blonde.”
14. “The Finns and Lapps were reduced to a helpless stammer.”
15. “No Trojan horse – and a happy ending, of course.”
16. “Egyptian, Persian — only one version; no other stands a chance.”
17. “Listen to an old Hungarian’s philosophy.”
18. “I’m through and through red, white and blue-ish. I talk this way because I’m British.”
19. “The Germans! Today! Heil!”
20. “No middle-class Brazilians who somehow never pay.”
21. “Why does he claim he’s Castilian? He thayth that he’th Cathtilian.”
22. “I can hear Hawaiian breezes blow.”
23. “The forties burn because the trumpets blare. The Yanks are coming, coming over there.”
24. “Mau Mau … and President of the United States of Love.”
25. “I could tell he was a Turk, but I liked him, anyway.”
26. “Those Siamese twins from faraway Peru.”
27. “Ashanti! Ibo! Ibo! Ibo! Ibo!”
28. “An Indian word meaning ‘hate.’ But the people smile all the time there and the cultural advantages are great.”
29. “We’ll find a million buck surprise to light those little Polish eyes.”
30. “In the castle of the King of the Belgians, we would visit through a false chiffonier.”
31. “Comes the monkey wrench! Smell that awful stench. Probably the French.”
32. “Here’s an example: ‘Two-down: A Peruvian poison dart.’”
33. “If what the Puritans forbid just ev’ry now and then we did.”
34. “Kill the Bosche!”
35. “With a gesture so gentle, or do it again ‘til it’s near Oriental.”
36. “That’s all very well, but what are we going to do about the Eye-talian?”
37. “The first case I defended – a poor old Muscovite – got 14 years for forging checks.”
38. “Number One genius and Number One fan … Daughter if well-to-do Florentine clan.”
39. “Fifty years from now, they’ll still be arguing about the grassy knoll, the Mafia, some Cuban crouched behind a stockade fence.”
40. “That’s it! No more Vietnamese! Get in!”
41. “Every girl in the chorus line is a genuine Philistine.”
42. “His hair, though – is it Cherokee? It’s black enough to be.”
43. “It’s ze only kind of music zat ve Huns und our honeys love to sing.”
44. “I’m your Hebrew slave, at your service.”
45. “Where you been? The term is Asian-American.”
46. “Not a tree or a Jew to block the lovely view.”
47. “And don’t bother me with Moliere; those Russians never pay.”
48. “Is he gay or European?”
49. “I’m Chile-Domini-Curican, but I always say I’m from Queens.”
50. “The shy ones, the spry ones, the grey ones, the fey ones, the oldish, the newish, the Irish, the Jewish.”
Peter Filichia is the New York-based theater critic emeritus for The Newark (N.J.) Star Ledger newspaper and News 12 television station. He is also the author of Let’s Put on a Musical (Back Stage Books, 2007), now in its third printing; Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hits /The Biggest Flops of the Season (Applause Books, 2010); and Broadway Musical MVPs 1960-2010: The Most Valuable Players of the Last 50 Seasons (Applause Books, 2011), chosen one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Performing Arts titles of 2011. His new book, Strippers, Showgirls, and Sharks: A Very Opinionated History of the Broadway Musicals That Did Not Win the Tony Award, will be published in May, 2013 by St. Martin’s Press.
Peter has been a columnist for Playbill, Theater.com, Theatermania and Theater Week. He blogs weekly at MasterworksBroadway.com; and writes “Filichia Features”for Musical Theatre International’s Web site The Marquee, and “Filichia on Friday” for Kritzerland Records’ Web site.
Before joining the Theatre World Awards in 1996 as host and head of the selection committee, Peter served four terms as president of the Drama Desk. He has served on an assessment panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, and is currently critic-in-residence for the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the musical theater judge for the ASCAP Awards program.
