The Golden Apple, the 1954 musicalization of Homer's The Odyssey (reset in post-Civil War America) that has attracted a cult following in the years since its original three-month Broadway run, will be featured during the 2017 season of the Encores! Great American Musical in Concert series at New York City Center.
Also on the season: Roger Miller's 1985 Tony Award-winning musical Big River, based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has been revived on Broadway; and the rarely-seen The New Yorkers, billed as “A Sociological Musical Satire,” which has a book by Herbert Fields and music and lyrics by Cole Porter (with help from original star, Jimmy Durante). A show that poked fun at Prohibition-era high society, The New Yorkers had a six-month run starting in December 1930 and introduced the Porter standard “Love for Sale.”
Here are dates and details, as per the Encores! production notes:
Big River
Feb 8—12, 2017
Music and Lyrics by Roger Miller
Book by William Hauptman
Adapted from the novel by Mark Twain
Featuring The Encores! Orchestra
Wednesday-Thursday at 7:30 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 PM and 8 PM, Sunday at 2 PM and 7 PM
Tickets start at $35
Subscriptions on sale July 25; General public September 26
A thoroughly original retelling of Mark Twain’s classic novel about friendship, freedom, and the untamed Mississippi, Big River was a musical underdog as scrappy and restless as Huckleberry Finn himself. The show was created in the age of British spectacles by a quintessentially American artist—the beloved country-western singer Roger Miller—and his Tony Award-winning score is a scintillating blend of bluegrass, gospel, and honky tonk. More than thirty years later, Big River remains an affecting journey through 1840s America in all its beauty and savagery.
The New Yorkers
A Sociological Musical Satire
March 22—26, 2017
Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter
Book by Herbert Fields
Based on a Story by E. Ray Goetz and Peter Arno
Featuring The Encores! Orchestra
Wednesday-Thursday at 7:30 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 PM and 8 PM, Sunday at 2 PM and 7 PM
Tickets start at $35
Subscriptions on sale July 25; General public September 26
Bullets fly and bathtub gin flows in Cole Porter’s 1930 Prohibition jape The New Yorkers, a gleefully amoral celebration of speakeasies, gangsters, society dames, and the great city they love. The musical centers on featherbrained socialite Alice Miller, whose bootlegger beau leads her on a madcap romp from Park Avenue to Sing Sing and back again. The New Yorkers produced a number of standards—“I Happen to Like New York,” “Love for Sale”—but much of the original material has been lost, making this Encores!’s most ambitious musical reconstruction ever. Support for The New Yorkers is provided by the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust. The score restoration for The New Yorkers is made possible by The Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Broadway Musical Restoration Fund.
The Golden Apple
May 10—14, 2017
Music Composed by Jerome Moross
Written by John Latouche
Featuring The Encores! Orchestra
Wednesday-Thursday at 7:30 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 PM and 8 PM, Sunday at 2 PM and 7 PM
Tickets start at $35
Subscriptions on sale July 25; General public September 26
Helen of Troy as a bored housewife? Ulysses as a dashing hero of the Spanish-American War? The whimsical and toweringly ambitious 1954 musical The Golden Apple does all that and more, reshaping the myths of The Iliad and The Odyssey into an all-American fable that conjures up the days when pie-baking contests were cutthroat and lovers eloped in hot air balloons. Despite its brief run, John Latouche and Jerome Moross’ “opera for Broadway” was hailed by critics and introduced the classic torch song “Lazy Afternoon.”
