The Golden Apple
Opening Night: May 10, 2017
Closing: May 14, 2017
Theater: New York City Center - Stage II
Don’t miss “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” (The New York Times) to see the ultimate cult musical! The Golden Apple is a whimsical and wildly ambitious show that introduced the classic torch song “Lazy Afternoon” and was hailed as a theatrical milestone in 1954. Inspired by the myths of The Iliad and The Odyssey, Jerome Moross and John Latouche’s musical conjures up the bygone days when pie-baking contests were cutthroat and lovers eloped in hot air balloons. Encores! is delighted to present The Golden Apple to a new generation.
READ THE REVIEWS:
May 11, 2017
To make a cult, it takes a failure. On that count, “The Golden Apple,” a musical retelling of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” set in Washington State around 1900, certainly qualifies. Though it opened to positive reviews at the Phoenix Theater in 1954, and was the first Off Broadway musical ever to transfer to Broadway, it flopped almost as soon as it arrived.
But failure alone does not suffice. A cult musical must also plummet directly into obscurity; if too many people know about it, how can it be the exclusive delight of connoisseurs? Then, too, there must be something of great quality that justifies the delight, and also something that doesn’t. The best such musicals are a bit outré, a bit funky, a bit too fey or fine to survive in their own time, and maybe even in ours. This is why we have the Encores! series, whose mission to glorify the peculiar treasures in America’s musical-theater attic has brought us such otherwise unproducible works as the Gershwins’ “Pardon My English” and, earlier this season, Cole Porter’s “The New Yorkers.” The revival of “The Golden Apple” that opened Wednesday night at City Center tops them all, not only in being the cultiest cult musical Encores! has ever attempted, but also in making a marvelous if last-ditch case for it. READ THE REVIEW