BIG RIVER, THE NEW YORKERS and THE GOLDEN APPLE Will Return to the Stage Next Year in Encores! Season

New York City Center's Tony-honored Encores! series, led by Artistic Director Jack Viertel and Music Director Rob Berman, begins its 24th season with Roger Miller's 1985 retelling of Mark Twain's classic novel, Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; followed by Cole Porter's 1930 Prohibition romp The New Yorkers, and The Golden Apple, John Latouche and Jerome Moross' 1954 reinvention of the Greek epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey into an all-American fable.

Encores! Big River
Feb 8-12, 2017
Wed - Thu 7:30pm, Fri 8pm, Sat 2 & 8pm, Sun 2 & 7pm
Tickets start at $35
Subscriptions on sale Jul 25; General public Sep 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.

Encores! The New Yorkers
Mar 22-26, 2017
Wed - Thu 7:30pm, Fri 8pm, Sat 2 & 8pm, Sun 2 & 7pm
Tickets start at $35
Subscriptions on sale Jul 25; General public Sep 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 generously provided by the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Charitable Trust. The score restoration for The New Yorkersis made possible by The Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Broadway Musical Restoration Fund.

Encores! The Golden Apple
May 10-14, 2017
Wed - Thu 7:30pm, Fri 8pm, Sat 2 & 8pm, Sun 2 & 7pm
Tickets start at $35
Subscriptions on sale Jul 25; General public Sep 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."

City Center dedicates this performance of The Golden Apple to the memory of Lex Kaplen, a devoted supporter of Encores!.