New Musical in Manhattan

The Golden Apple (music by Jerome Moross; words by John Latouche) is a slightly offbeat musical, given a slightly off-Broadway production (by the new, knowledgeable lower Second Avenue Phoenix Theater--TIME, Dec. 14). All in all, it makes what's on-beat take a beating, and Broadway seem a little backward. The Golden Apple transports the Trojan War set, with considerable irreverence, to the U.S. around 1900--specifically, to a small town near Mt. Olympus, Wash. "Roughly the first half acts out the Iliad: Helen (Kay Ballard), the wife of a local dignitary, runs off with a drummer named Paris (Jonathan Lucas) and after a lot of commotion comes home to hubby. The second half acts out the Odyssey: Ulysses, a Spanish-American war veteran, imbibes city life at a neighboring seaport, goes to a water front dive, meets a Circe from the wrong side of the tracks, returns in the end to a Penelope busy with a patchwork quilt.

Themselves dealing with a patchwork of old legends, Latouche and Moross have yet contrived something attractively individual. The Golden Apple is much less satire meant to strike home than a front-porch-and-parlor version of Homer. The local Venus wins the golden apple in a pie-baking contest. The face that launched a thousand ships now sets perhaps a thousand tongues awagging. Scylla and Charybdis are a slick pair of brokers. The famed vanished song the sirens sang turns out to have run:

By a goona, goona-goona lagoon . . . We will spoon-a, spoon-a, spoon beneath the moon.

Not a word of the show is spoken ; it is all sung, with an effect less operatic than balladlike. Composer Moross' score creates a nice turn-of-the-century American atmosphere, has some pleasantly lyrical snatches and brightly mocking ditties. John Latouche's words are for the most part gay, ingenious and witty. There are weak spots. The show at times is a bit fancy, at others a bit cute; and the Iliad yields less rewarding home-town stuff than the Odyssey does hotcha.

But the. general individuality of the thing itself is braced by the expertness of the production: by the crisp pacing of Director Norman Lloyd, the lively performing of a likable cast, the fresh, amusing Hanya Holm dances, the clean simple, vivid William and Jean Eckart sets. Most of the time The Golden Apple is not only more adventurous and more sophisticated than Broadway; it is also decidedly more amusing.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.