The Apple Tree: Golden Delicious

Though the team of Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) won a Pulitzer Prize for their big, brassy Fiorello! and will always be most remembered for their classic musical comedy/drama Fiddler on the Roof, I'd say their finest achievements were two pieces whose main virtues came in that sweet and approachable gift-wrapping called charm. 

Charm doesn't get a lot of big laughs from jokes, but it makes you smile a lot from humor.  Charm doesn't roll out the chorus for a boffo production number showstopper, but instead delights us with a warm and sincere character-driven solo.  The appreciation for Bock and Harnick's charming She Loves Me has certainly, and deservedly, grown since its modest initial Broadway run in 1963, due in part to The Roundabout Theatre Company's 1993 revival.  Now the Roundabout offers us another Bock and Harnick charmer, The Apple Tree, a show whose reputation is mainly built on memories of Barbara Harris' 1966 Tony-winning star performance and the occasional sixteen bars of the song "Gorgeous" that young comic belters are known to sing at auditions.  And though director Gary Griffin's revival gets a smack-dab star performance from Kristin Chenoweth and just as impressive work from a pair of contemporary musical theatre's most reliable leading men, Brian d'Arcy James and Marc Kudisch (this is certainly the best sung musical comedy to have opened on Broadway in years), it's the gentle beauty, good-natured humor and solid music theatre craft of the authors that make this revival such a satisfying joy. 

Bock and Harnick collaborated on the book (with additional material by Jerome Coopersmith) using short stories from three American humorists as source material.  The idea was to create three very different short musicals – one taking place at the start of Biblical times, one about midway into civilization and the final one set in then-contemporary America – with a connecting link examining male/female romantic relationships. 

The first, and most fully developed of the trio, comes from Mark Twain's companion pieces, Eve's Diary and Excerpts From Adam's Diary, which whimsically imagined The Garden of Eden as upstate New York and dealt with, you might say, the invention of love.  Frank L. Stockton's The Lady Or The Tiger? supplied the inspiration for the short middle piece, presented in the style of a Biblical movie epic, where a semi-barbaric princess must choose between having her lower-born lover marry another woman or be devoured by a lion.  Jules Feiffer's Passionella, a Cinderella-like spoof of 1960's celebrity, resembles an extended sketch from a typical T.V. variety show of 40 years ago. 

Bock's music is arguably the finest of his Broadway career and inarguably his most diverse; suggesting Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring for the Twain piece, Elmer Bernstein's film score for The Ten Commandments for the Stockton, and the classic sound of slick television orchestras for the Feiffer.  The original Broadway production had remarkably versatile orchestrations from Eddie Sauter, which have been replaced by Jonathan Tunick's, which are in the same style but utilize fewer musicians.  Harnick's expertly crafted lyrics are among his most literate, clever and heartfelt. 

As the central character in all three pieces, Kristin Chenoweth gives the finest, most mature and naturally funny performance of her New York stage career.  Broad, girlish comedy made her an above-the-title star, but as Eve her chipper presence is toned down into a youth full of curious wonder who grows into a wise and sensitive woman.  Her simply soulful solo of "What Makes Me Love Him?", which gently glides into the story's bittersweet finish, is a moment of sublime tenderness. 

Though the second and third acts call for more broad-stroke humor, Chenoweth delivers the laughs without overwhelming the material.  Her lusty Princess Barbara has her silly moments, but underneath there's a lover whose passion can turn deadly with selfish jealousy.  Her humble television-obsessed chimneysweeper, who turns into a Jayne Mansfield-looking movie star in Passionella, is adorably sympathetic. 

As her trio of leading men, Brian d'Arcy James is sometimes regulated to playing her foil, particularly as the continually one-upped Adam.  (The authors even gave Eve the show's first song, even though Adam has the opening scene)  He plays the role as a blue-collar guy's guy so reminiscent of Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden character that it wouldn't have seemed out of place to hear him growl, "To the moon, Eve!"  But the gradual and subtle changes in his Adam allow us to watch a man slowly fall in love and it's quite touching.  He's just as good in two less-subtle roles as a warrior boy-toy and a wildly funny turn as a part Bob Dylan, part John Lennon, sorta Scottish, sorta Welch 60's beat poet rocker. 

Marc Kudisch has only a few minutes on stage as Eden's snake, but gives a full-bodied performance loaded with slithering bravado and panache.  Narrating the next two pieces, he's top notch as an amiable guitar-strumming balladeer telling us the tale of …The Tiger? and a snazzily slick T.V. spokesman for Passionella. 

John Lee Beatty's bare stage set representing The Garden of Eden is appropriately suggestive of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, with costume designer Jess Goldstein dressing the first couple in virginal white.  Together they provide colorful pastels for The Lady or The Tiger? and a sleek, b-movie sexiness for Passionella. 

If it were written today, The Apple Tree might have been cursed with the label of being "too small for Broadway", whatever that means.  And while it may seem a modest production by contemporary standards, The Apple Tree towers above much of what is produced nowadays by simply presenting fine, accomplished actors, perfectly cast, in high quality musical comedy material.  That's a gimmick I'd like to see tried more often. 

Photos by Joan Marcus:  Top:  Kristin Chenoweth and Marc Kudisch

Center:  Walter Charles, Brian d'Arcy James and Kristin Chenoweth

Bottom:  Kristin Chenoweth and Company