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Wonderful news! Thanks for the link.
Gary
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I see that the highly regarded City Center (NY) Encores! series will feature The Golden Apple next month (May 10-14, 2017). This series is famous for reviving neglected productions in short short runs with minimal staging.
http://www.nycitycenter.org/blog.aspx?tagname=The-Golden-Apple&groupid=10&fullsite=true
Obviously you've never been to an Encores "production." Short runs they may be, with decent rehearsal periods, actors pretty much off book and with full sets and costumes - why - because they all want to do what Chicago did - move to Broadway - that hasn't happened much.
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Posted: |
May 14, 2017 - 5:18 PM
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By: |
Rozsaphile
(Member)
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What a delight! I haven't enjoyed a musical theater production so much in years. This is no mere mixture of "numbers" and plot. It's a through-composed operetta that rings with attractive sounds from beginning to end. The City Center staging may be simple and the costumes are surely from somebody's warehouse. But "Oh, the music -- 135 glorious minutes of it, unsullied by dialogue. . . . "The glory of The Golden Apple is a series of complex musical scenes and let's-call-them-arias that define their own territory. . . . [they] extend well beyond musical-theater formulas to the realm of art song" (Jesse Green in the NY Times). And to have them played by an on-stage orchestra of thirty-one! By contrast some of today's "Broadway musicals" have their audio phoned in (literally) by a couple of guys with synthesizers in a studio across the street.
All the seeds of The Big Country are already present in this 1954 gem -- everything from the wide-open prairie sound to the bold staccato fight scenes and the gentle loping of McKay's solo ride. And there's so much more -- jazz, blues, ragtime, hoe-downs, even echoes of the Symphony. If Moross had composed nothing else, you would get a very full sense of his talent from this show. Even where the music limps, the comedy and dancing would delight the eye and ear. The role of Paris is entirely danced, and there is ballet throughout. Fine voices everywhere, with a special shout-out to newcomer Mikaela Bennett as Penelope.
I have the old cast album somewhere, but it never did much for me. Maybe that will change now. The show doesn't excerpt well. The songs are brief. It is in their context and continuity that they offer so much pleasure.
Surely I'm not the only one who's seen this?
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Being thousands of miles away, I haven't seen it, but I've seen the Times review:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/theater/the-golden-apple-review.html?_r=0
Been meaning to post it these last few days. So glad that you got to see the show, and that it measured up for you. I'm sure you're right about the score not excerpting well on recordings. If memory serves, even the liner notes for the CD of the Original Cast discuss this.
I wonder if it's too much to hope that the Encore! performance was recorded and could be released on CD. The recent full-length album, I've heard, was far from ideal in performance or recording.
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Nu, between the two of us, we ilck the platter clean.
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