I have enjoyed some fairly swell experiences on Broadway in recent months – “Spamalot,” “Sweet Charity” – but the City Center Encores! production of “The Apple Tree” with Kristin Chenoweth (which ran, alas, for only five performances this weekend) was the most overpoweringly marvelous time I have had at a musical in at least a season.

Ms. Chenoweth, though well supported by a pair of leading men (Malcom Gets and Michael Cerveris), was practically the whole show. She commanded the stage as the first woman in Mark Twain’s “The Diary of Adam and Eve,” got plenty of opportunity for mugging in harem garb as a conflicted princess in “The Lady or the Tiger,” and turned Jules Feiffer’s “Passionella” into a comic tour de force.

“Apple Tree,” like a lot of contemporary, post-“Producers” Broadway, was satirical and ironic. Yet each of the three stories follows the same curious trajectory: What starts as sarcastic becomes gradually more sentimental with each segment (quite the opposite of most new shows). Ms. Chenoweth is sublimely gifted at steering us toward this reverse subversion, in addition to having the voice of an angel.

The threesome was particularly adroit at finding the tenderness and real warmth at the heart of “Passionella.” This outright travesty posited Ms. Chenoweth as 1950s high-glam Marilyn Monrobot pitted against a 1960s-style grungy anti-hero portrayed by Mr. Gets as a blend of Brando, Warhol, and Bob Dylan (“with the hairstyle of Eleanor Roosevelt”), who advocates a neorealist approach that is even phonier than old Hollywood.

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There were three elements in “Comes Once in a Lifetime: Betty Comden & Adolph Green” that I have never seen before at one of the 92 Street Y’s Lyrics and Lyricists concerts. The show had two-piano accompaniment throughout, provided by artistic director Paul Trueblood and Dennis Buck, which gave the music a very full, almost orchestral sound. It also made use of body mics and even choreography. These factors conspired to turn the presentation into something less like a typical concert and more like a Broadway show.

Some of the evening’s highlights came from scores that were distinctly not metrocentric, such as the Hollywood spoof “Fade Out, Fade In” and “Hallelujah, Baby” – both unrevived shows. “On the Town’s” opening dirge was well staged and sung in the three principal male registers: Walter Charles (basso), Eugene Fleming (baritone), and Jim Walton (tenor). Mr. Charles’s deep pipes and villainous attitude were also impressive in “My Fortune Is My Face” and the Rodgers-esque “Captain Hook’s Waltz.”

The first half concluded with a long stretch of love songs, ending with Beth Leavel in a Minelli-esque “Just in Time” that went from small to big. The second concerned songs tailored to specific stars (a curious idea to build a segment around).Ms. Leavel brought it to a close, as well, doing two more songs from “Bells Are Ringing” – the melancholy “Party’s Over” and the serio-comic “I’m Going Back.”