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Adventures in Theater History: Philadelphia @aithpodcast.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Very proud of our discovery today about the show "To Hell With Orpheus" - which premiered on August 18, 1953 at a New Jersey Summer Theatre. A young Jo Sullivan was in the cast. (The whole story is on our Facebook page, since it's a long essay. I've put most of it in the Alt Text.)

August 18, 1953: The summer tent theater north of Philadelphia, St. John Terrell's Music Circus, hosted the world premiere of a musical - one just that day it had received its new title: "To Hell With Orpheus." The score was Jacques Offenbach's "Orpheus in the Underworld."

The book was based on a short story by Ring Lardner and was a modern version of the Orpheus myth, set largely in Brunswick, Maine.

Morely Meredith (center right) played a moody poet named Joe Orpheus, and Jo Sullivan (right) was his girl Eurydice. Various Greek gods invade the all-American scenery, however, including Peggy O'Hara as Cupid (center left).

The ambitious Terrell (left) hoped eventually to bring the show to Broadway - but the path seemed to be blocked by the looming presence of producer Billy Rose, who had already announced plans to bring a mammoth production of the original Offenbach operetta to the Great White Way that very same season.

This was the reason for the last-minute title change of "To Hell With Orpheus."

St. John Terrell has reasons to be optimistic he might prevail in the battle with Billy Rose - after all, he had done two operettas with the sprightly Jo Sullivan already that summer, and total attendance at the Music Fair was approaching 175,000 people.

Attracted by all the attention, both the New York Times and Time Magazine came to Lambertville to do feature articles about Terrell's show.

The reviews were certainly very positive, and the Inquirer called it "a marvelous spoof." Everyone expected that the show might finally make a star of Sullivan, the diminutive soprano who had already been a hit in a revival of "Oklahoma!"

But as things worked out, "To Hell With Orpheus" became another one of those Tryout projects that died on their way from the Delaware River to the city on the other side of the Hudson, and it never made it to Broadway. The competition was just too stiff, and there didn't seem to be room for TWO musicals about a "crazy, mixed-up Greek kid."

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Adventures in Theater History: Philadelphia @aithpodcast.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Here's the entire post, for those of you who use Facebook: www.facebook.com/AITHpodcast/...

facebook.com

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