Milk and Honey was the first Broadway musical set in Israel, which gave songwriter
Jerry Herman (making his Broadway debut after several Off-Broadway revues, notably Parade) the opportunity to use words like "Shalom" (a song title) and "Hora" as well as borrow some local musical styles as influences. But actually the music had two main parts. There were operatic ballads for the big-voiced leads, especially
Robert Weede (of The Most Happy Fella), and there was special comic material for Yiddish theater star
Molly Picon. The story concerned a group of middle-aged Jewish-American widows traveling to Israel in search of husbands (was there ever a better scenario to draw in New York area theater parties?), so the songs focused on characters seeking second chances at love, including
Weede's Phil Arkin, actually a man separated from his wife who meets
Mimi Benzell's Ruth Stein. "Let's Not Waste a Moment," he tells her, despite the little matter of his estranged wife.
Picon's Clara Weiss, meanwhile, has to seek the approval of her dead husband to move on, which she does in her big eleven o'clock number "Hymn to Hymie."
Herman, who had previously written special material for the likes of
Tallulah Bankhead and
Hermione Gingold, seemed more at home with such material (
Picon's march, "Chin Up, Ladies" was also a winner) than he did with the ballads. But he clearly was a craftsman in the
Irving Berlin mold, not particularly clever, but a natural melodist. As a result, Milk and Honey was a winning score, and it is well sung by this cast. ~ William Ruhlmann