Thumbs Up to Leslie Kritzer’s Haunting, Heartbreaking Ballad ‘Apple and Tree’ in The Memory Show

Leslie Kritzer and Catherine Cox don their emotional armor and prepare for battle in The Memory Show, a discordant new musical about a mother and daughter at war. In Zach Redler and Sara Cooper’s unconventional new tuner, the face-off begins when Kritzer (known only as “Daughter”) begrudingly moves home to take care of her mother with early-onset Alzheimer’s—or as Cox (“Mother”) sees it, her daughter chooses to move home because she can’t keep a boyfriend or pay her own rent. Misunderstandings, name calling and bickering abound, but amidst the chaos, Kritzer strikes a delicate chord in the heart-wrenching song “Apple and Tree.” Accompanied by soft piano and strings, Kritzer unearths the reason she decided to sacrifice her own life to become her mother's nurse—even though her increasingly ill mother rarely remembers she has a daughter. “I'm made out of her, but she's not made of me,” Kritzer sings to herself like a haunting lullaby, “I'm her apple and she is my tree.” In honor of Mother’s Day, we challenge anyone who has ever had a mother to get through this song without a tissue (or five). The Memory Show has plenty of explosive, high-tension songs fraught with drama, but it’s the quietest melody that packs the biggest punch in this bittersweet mother-daughter story.