This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: In preparation for this, I listened to an interview with Jerry Herman where he talked about Milk and Honey, and he said he had, you know, just his face lights up when he thinks about it because it was such an incredible experience, but mostly he remembers the first orchestra read-through because he had never heard his music played by an orchestra before. Of course, Off-Broadway, you wouldn't have. When he actually was the pianist for all those Off-Broadway shows because they couldn't afford anybody. Right. So, he's actually playing the piano for everything he does prior to this with just small combos. And all of a sudden, Hershey K. had done these orchestrations, and he just said he dissolved into tears.

Oh, that's so beautiful. And they're great orchestrations. Welcome, everybody, to a Musical Theatre Podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theatre history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff. Today is Christmas Day. Well, that's when the episode's coming out. And I already celebrated Christmas in July earlier this year, you all may remember, by covering A Christmas Story, which is a really fun episode if you missed it. And why? Because this past summer was rough for me, and I really wanted an excuse to celebrate and make sugar cookies. But anyway, today, I still wanted to celebrate. And I thought, you know, during this time of year, we talk so much about a little town of Bethlehem and Nazareth and far, far away on Judea's plains, so we should cover a musical that's actually about Israel.

And that's what we're doing. We're covering Jerry Herman's first big Broadway musical, Milk and Honey. And I'm so excited we're doing it, particularly because of the guest joining me to discuss it. He is a Broadway expert, director, writer, producer, lecturer, educator, choreographer. He was the artistic director of the Fifth Avenue Theatre in Seattle from 2000 to 2019, which my gosh, how many times have we discussed the Fifth Ave on this podcast? Speaking of A Christmas Story. Anyway, what else do I want to say about you, David? He's the first guest on the podcast to have directed Carolee Carmelo in a Tony-nominated performance in the musical Scandalous. He's also a podcast host of his own show here on the Broadway Podcast Network. Everyone, please welcome David Armstrong.

[2:29] David Armstrong: Thank you. Thank you so much. It's so great to be here, Jeffrey. I'm really excited to talk about Milk and Honey, although I am disappointed I didn't get to talk about A Christmas Story, because of course that is very close to my heart, because I produced the world premiere of A Christmas Story at the Fifth Avenue Theatre.

[2:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes, you're all over that cast album.

[2:48] David Armstrong: Yeah, well, most of that score was written in the basement of the Fifth Avenue Theatre after we hired Pasek and Paul to do the show. And it was a very short timeline, so we locked them in the basement and made them work.

[3:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You're just like passing water and bread underneath the door.

[3:09] David Armstrong: It was not far from that, actually, yeah.

[3:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, we had Ian Eisendrath on for that, and he had just wonderful things to say about that whole experience.

[3:19] David Armstrong: Well, Ian was on our staff at that time. He was our resident musical director, and he was integral into making that show happen, especially on the timeline that we had. And of course, he's gone on to work with them on every project since.

[3:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Including Spirited, which is out this holiday season.

[3:38] David Armstrong: Absolutely.

[3:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, so cool. All right, before we jump into Milk and Honey, I want to know a little bit more about you. Like, forever a musical theatre nerd? When did this hit? When did the bug get you?

[3:50] David Armstrong: I was one of those strange kids that just knew from the beginning exactly what I wanted to do. From the earliest time, the legendary story. And I'm sure I was interested in musical theatre before that, mostly from television, from seeing from the movies on television. I grew up in Cincinnati. I actually don't know the first live theatre production I went to. It was probably a high school production of something. But when I was four or five years old, the story goes, and it doesn't quite add up. I've tried to recreate this a couple times. My mother and her friend and the friend's daughter, who was around my age, a little younger, they were taking us to the movies to see Dumbo.

[4:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay.

[4:40] David Armstrong: Disney's Dumbo. And they went to the wrong theatre, and we saw Gypsy instead. And from that moment on, and this part is true, I was obsessed with Gypsy. I apparently demanded to have the cast album. How I knew what a cast album was, I don't know. But I was immersed in Gypsy from that moment on.

[5:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's why we're best friends, David. This is great. I love that so much. And of course, when you're a kid, Gypsy is a story about kids and show business. I mean, that's what it's about. And of course, I'm sure I was less interested in the second half of the story than I was in the first half of the story. But that's what it's about. Kids on stage, and you see yourself in it. And obviously, I had taste from the very beginning. I knew what good was.

[5:31] David Armstrong: You had amazing taste. And also, I think that Gypsy works, and I can't wait for an episode on Gypsy. But it's operating on so many levels, because I think that there is an entry point for children to understand the complex relationships of parents and children, and then add show business into all of that. I understand why kids would be interested, or at least fascinated by Gypsy.

[5:57] David Armstrong: So from that moment on, or before, or shortly after, I was fascinated by Broadway musicals, by film musicals, and then started going to dancing school when I was six, and got involved in creative dramatics, which is what they used to call it. I don't know if they use that term anymore, but it was basically theater for kids. It was how do you involve kids in their imagination and theatrical types of things. And so I was constantly doing that kind of stuff. I did shows. I did community theater shows. I was the kid in a lot of community theater shows, and even college shows and stuff like that. I was never a professional kid, but did lots of theater. Talk about a really strange kid. I would organize the neighborhood into doing shows that I would produce and direct and write and star in before I knew what any of that meant other than star in. And so I often say I do now what I've done since I was 10 years old, basically.

[6:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's incredible. We have a lot in common because my scout troop had the best skits at scout camp. And you want to know why? Because of me.

[7:08] David Armstrong: Because of you, of course.

[7:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, exactly. And forcing everybody to get into character.

[7:16] David Armstrong: I'm sure you did not let anybody slack off.

[7:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, no, no, no. Absolutely. Do you want this mayor badge or not?

[7:24] David Armstrong: That's fantastic. So then you grow up, you become this artistic director. Was the goal when you joined Fifth Ave was to be creating theater that would then transfer to New York? Was that the goal or was that already the tradition? I'm not sure.

[7:37] David Armstrong: It was not tradition. It sort of dabbled in that. It had been part of the original tour that launched Jekyll and Hyde a decade earlier than when I went to the Fifth. But when I got that job, I was living in New York. I'd been living in New York for 20 years and working in the theater. And I had a lot of context. So everybody I would run into, especially Broadway producers, I would say, I'm going to Seattle to the Fifth Avenue Theater. I think it would be a great place to try out shows. So as part of the mix of what we did, and I just kept at that for the six months from the time I got the job to before I went to Seattle to take it. And after about being there six months, I got a call from some producers who said, we've got a show we want to talk to you about. And that show turned out to be Hairspray.

[8:39] David Armstrong: Yeah, so it was very fortuitous. It was very fortuitous that that was the first. It wasn't the first thing, but we actually did a different new musical that didn't go anywhere the year before. But it was one of the first shows that we did as a new musical in a mix of revivals and sometimes presenting. People are often confused about the Fifth Avenue because it was 90% a producing theater company during the time I was there, and that's what I was brought there to turn it into. It had been a presenting house prior to that.

[9:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Like tours coming through.

[9:14] David Armstrong: Almost all tours. And then it started doing a mix of producing in tandem with Theater Under the Stars in Houston. And that was very successful for a while. And then that had sort of run its course. And when I was hired, it was to put the emphasis on producing based in Seattle, still with one or two tours in a season, which almost no other theater does that. It's mostly producing with some presenting.

[9:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It seems like a crazy amount of staff work to make that happen.

[9:45] David Armstrong: Yeah. And what I added to it was then working in partnership with New York producers, and then eventually on our own to produce new musicals. So during the time I was there, we produced 22 new musicals, and nine of them went to Broadway.

[10:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, my gosh.

[10:03] David Armstrong: Two of them won the Tony Award for Best Musical.

[10:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Not bad. Not bad.

[10:08] David Armstrong: Well, it's crazy. That was Memphis and Hairspray, right?

[10:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Memphis and Hairspray. If you would ask me in 2000 when I went to the theater, what do you see happening in the next 18 years in terms of what would be your dream, I would think one or two shows going to Broadway would have been what I would realistically have said. So it was way beyond what I ever imagined it could be. It just was luck. A lot of it was that when we did Hairspray, Margo Lion, who was the lead producer on that, had a fantastic time. The show, of course, was very successful. She went back to New York and literally told people, told her colleagues, I never want to do another show out of town anywhere except at the Fifth Avenue Theater. So that started a ball rolling, which was, again, some of it was dumb luck, some of it was just smart luck because just making sure to talk to people and get the word out and do the things that I did. But it was fantastic. It was the job of a lifetime.

[11:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's so cool. I mentioned one of your latest adventures has been into podcasting. I think our shows hold hands a lot. Tell me the pitch for your podcast.

[11:24] David Armstrong: Sure. My podcast came out of a course that I started teaching when I stepped down from the Fifth Avenue Theater. The University of Washington invited me to teach a course on the history of the musical theater or asked me if I would be interested in doing that. I took a week or two to try to think about what would I do, what would I talk about. I came up with a course which then inspired the podcast. Both of those have the same premise. My subtitle for the podcast, which is called Broadway Nation, is the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African-Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process. That is very much what I teach as well. I do a big lecture course at the University of Washington School of Drama. Halleloo.

[12:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Beautiful. Well, I love that so much. We all know cultural and emotional impacts of musical theater are kind of high on my list in terms of priorities and talking about. In particular, the gays and the Jews, man, two of the most important forces in creating this beautiful tradition. I'm so grateful to all of the wonderful people that may have identified as either of that in our history. I can think of few better representatives than Mr. Jerry Herman, who we'll be talking about today.

[12:47] David Armstrong: Composer extraordinaire of Hello Dolly, Mame, La Cage au... Wait. David Engle taught me how to do this. La Cage au Fol, because I don't speak French, and he taught me how to do that. And Milk and Honey. We've talked a lot about Jerry Herman on the podcast, of course, and if you want to go back and listen to our Hello Dolly episode listeners, you can hear about his childhood and growing up. But if you remember, he started out, I guess in his composing career off-Broadway, writing reviews. There was this big surge of off-Broadway musical theater review style shows that were really opportunities for

[13:30] David Armstrong: Amazing performers to strut their stuff. And, I mean, he was kind of the king of writing this material, right? And I think he wrote a lot of those songs while he was in college, and then came to New York. And it was a way that songwriters could make a name for themselves, at least in a small way, by putting together reviews of their songs or contributing their songs to the various reviews that, as you just said, were happening around town. And this turned out to be, I mean, this was like the dream scenario for this type of beginning of a career, because producers came and saw his stuff, and one in particular, by the name of Gerard Oistreicher, maybe? I heard Jerry Herman speak it, because I listened to an interview with Jerry Herman, and Oistreicher, I think, but we might both be wrong.

Hey, we love you, Gerard. Anyway, he approaches Jerry Herman, and writer, actor, director, Don, is it Appel? I think it's Appel. Yeah, about writing a musical about Israel. And he sends them literally across the world to Israel to take in the local flavors and surroundings to see what they can come up with. Now, what I consistently have to remind myself about this musical is this is pre-Fiddler on the Roof.

[15:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[15:02] David Armstrong: Like, it's hard for me to think of musical theater before Fiddler on the Roof, and to also recognize how much Jewish influence and culture was found in the art form from the beginning. And yet, this was the first big musical about Israel and Jewish life.

[15:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, it's part of a series of musicals that happened in the 1960s that started to focus on Jewish life. But for the first time, because—and I also read something that Sheldon Harnick was talking about, that prior to this, Jewish writers—

[15:38] David Armstrong: Fiddler on the Roof.

[15:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Exactly. Prior to this, Jewish writers, the generation before of Jewish writers, didn't really want to identify as Jewish and didn't want to write about Jewish subjects. They were trying to succeed, not in spite of their Jewishness, because this was still a marginalized group of people.

[15:57] David Armstrong: It could kill a career. So everybody's changing their names, right? I mean, all of our great composers—

[16:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: They want to be Americans, and they want to be seen as Americans. And that happens until after World War II. And he was talking about this generation that comes of age after World War II has a very different idea. And the events that happened in World War II have a lot to do with this, because all of a sudden, people want to celebrate their Jewishness, or at least identify strongly as Jewish. And this starts a series of shows. And it's hard to pin down exactly. It starts a little bit in the 50s. I think Wish You Were Here, maybe, might qualify as the first show with a strong Jewish content, because it's set at one of those, you know, Jewish summer camps in the Catskills kind of thing.

[17:03] David Armstrong: Right. No, that's true. I didn't think about that.

[17:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, that's very cool.

[17:06] David Armstrong: But that's back in the 50s. But there aren't a lot—you're right. And the 60s definitely puts this on the front burner. And Milk and Honey is right at the start of that. And then I Can Get It For You Wholesale is another show with a strong Jewish flavor.

[17:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Same season as this one.

[17:12] David Armstrong: Same season as this one, set in the garment district, in the world of the garment district of the 1930s. And then Funny Girl, I would say, is another show which puts Jewishness right front. And then Fiddler. All of those within four years, basically four or five years.

[17:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow.

[17:30] David Armstrong: Except for Wish You Were Here, which is back in the 50s. We also would need to talk, because obviously Molly Picon is going to come up, talking about Yiddish theater is going to be important to this particular title. And when you look at how Yiddish theater informed musical theater, not just from a sense of comedy and the performers who were popular in Yiddish theater, but what it has to say about Jewish performers who were coming to America to seek asylum, essentially, right? Because they're not safe where they are in other places of the world and how that influx of Jewish artists brings artistic vitality to New York City.

[18:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely. And the Yiddish theater, which is not discussed, in my opinion, nearly as much as it should be in the history of Broadway, because it really is so much of the roots of the Broadway musical are in the Yiddish theater, which is happening almost simultaneously with the birth of the musical. So the two things are happening sort of like in parallel universes, one down on 2nd Avenue and the other in Times Square from starting in 1900, basically, more or less at the turn of that century. And so these things are happening and the Gershwins live on 2nd Avenue and are involved in Yiddish theater. And there's all this interaction between them that's very seldom talked about. So you're right, it is crucial to the history and the development of the Broadway musical.

And in so many ways, just the way they tell the stories, the way they use the music, and I often talk about what Jerry Herman does, the show tune, the Broadway show tune, is what happens when this Jewish tradition of music and this African-American tradition of music intersect. And that's what creates the Broadway show tune.

[19:26] David Armstrong: Glorious. I love that math. We've had so many great conversations this year on the podcast about kind of our family tree of musical theater, everything from finally discussing operetta and those roots in Europe to the ones that were created here out of racism and persecution, like minstrelsy. And then I love this other layer that we haven't discussed, which is the Yiddish theater that's born out of people coming to America in order to express themselves artistically. That is part of our history as well. That's something to be proud of. We see that story vividly in Fiddler on the Roof. At the end of Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye and his family are moving to America, and the youngest girl in that family—I don't remember what the youngest kids' names are—is the same age as Irving Berlin when he arrives in New York at that exact same moment.

Irving Berlin comes from Anatevka, basically. Anatevka is a fictional town. But that's the world he's coming from. And his story is so amazing because he basically arrives in America completely uneducated, not speaking English, doesn't go past the third grade probably, and invents American culture.

[21:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You know, speaking of a math equation, my gosh, that's crazy.

[21:06] David Armstrong: How does that happen? But that story is told through so many of these creators, and then Jerry Herman becomes the second generation or maybe the third generation that this is passed down to, that picks up this baton and carries it forward.

[21:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's great. Speaking of the end of Fiddler on the Roof, one of the famous lines from that last scene is from Yintze the Matchmaker. They're talking about maybe meeting again in Jerusalem. And kind of pivoting into Milk and Honey, there is this Jewish tradition of visiting Israel that starts churning up around there. But the history of this country is vast and complex, and it's also the size of New Jersey. That blows my mind. It blows my mind that there's this tiny little place in the world that is home to some of the greatest miracles and some of the most contentious relationships ever, all within the state of New Jersey. And, of course, Yintze in the movie of Fiddler on the Roof is Molly Picon, who is the star of Milk and Honey.

[22:23] David Armstrong: Yeah, it's Picon, of course, because Picon would be like Latin America.

[22:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I think it's Picon. I don't know. I'm from the Midwest. I say Picon.

[22:33] David Armstrong: I think I've always heard it as Molly Picon, but I don't know.

[22:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, you're probably right. You're probably right. So to just touch on a little bit of history of Israel, and this is basically Hebrew Bible, we have Abraham, right? Abraham has two sons. One is Jacob, Jacob and sons, also known as Israel most of the time. His sons and his wives used to call him dad. And then the other was Esau. Is that right? Now I'm trying to remember from Sunday school days. And the brothers don't get along. And I'm super generalizing this, everybody. But one takes the northern part of Israel and one takes the southern part of Israel. And so there's always this division of people who are kind of not getting along. From there, people are always conquering it. The Greeks and the Romans.

[23:22] David Armstrong: Everybody. People keep coming in and taking it over. And probably the last group to do that, the Brits. And one of the guys in charge, I'm not getting the names right, chancellor, ambassador, somebody from the UK, decides that by creating an independent state of Israel, it's going to buoy the allies and unify them. So he writes this whole proclamation to move forward the idea of making Israel its own country. So Israel independence doesn't really happen until 1940s. Is that right?

[24:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. After World War II is really the incentive for this, partly because the events of World War II shine a light on this. And a lot of the first people who moved to Israel are Holocaust survivors and are trying to find a place to. The idea of they should have a homeland, the Jews should have their own homeland or return to their homeland, however you want to look at it, becomes a centerpiece. But it is the founding of the state of Israel that allows, which I think is only like 15 years old, when the events of Milk and Honey happen. It's still pretty fresh. The idea of celebrating it, I think, is where this producer comes into play. And I always find that story you told so interesting, because he just says, I want to do a show about Israel, about modern Israel.

Period. Go. And they have to figure it out. So cool. All that being said, a really interesting place and an incredibly complex place with a lot of history, and yet also surprisingly new in terms of being recognized as an independent nation. Now, here's the thing, though, everybody, an epic drama, Milk and Honey is not that.

[25:24] David Armstrong: What they came up with was something maybe more along the lines of, oh gosh, Most Happy Fella?

[25:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, of course, Robert Weed is the star of Most Happy Fella, so that is part of it.

[25:37] David Armstrong: Absolutely. And he has one volume, loud. And it's a glorious loud. But I would say Most Happy Fella is a much more dramatic story than Milk and Honey.

[25:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, because Jerry Herman's bringing his cheerfulness to it, for sure. And a lot more dancing. There's a lot of dancing in this.

[25:54] David Armstrong: A lot of dancing, which I was amazed just to read the script and see how much dancing there was.

[26:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: We read through the script, you and I. Now, I have this theory that what we read was maybe written down by an assistant stage manager.

[26:10] David Armstrong: Oh, yeah.

[26:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right?

[26:11] David Armstrong: Definitely. Oh, yeah. I love those scripts, though, because it tells you everything that happened. On beat five, they do this.

[26:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, literally, it says two counts of eight pass by, and then Ari gets up on a rock. We don't need to know it, but it's there, and I'm grateful for it.

[26:28] David Armstrong: I actually love reading those old stage manager scripts. Every script you got used to be like that, because they were trying to help amateur groups just recreate what had happened on—

[26:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Figure out what on earth they were doing, because they're just going to get this libretto full of music.

[26:41] David Armstrong: Yeah, exactly. And the idea that you're supposed to do something else, even in a high school, and not recreate what was done on Broadway is a very recent idea, that somebody owns those rights. They were actually trying to help people recreate the show as best they could.

[27:00] David Armstrong: Protect the ideas. Yeah. Wow. Do you know what this also reminds me of is in going through this show, and look, I went through, I have my BFA in musical theater, everybody. But part of what we do in higher education now is about like, what are you bringing to the song? And how are you acting through the song? And this kind of show, this kind of score is from a time period where like, just sing the song. And if it's a good song, it'll do a lot of the work for you. I feel that way about a lot of Rodgers and Hart songs where it's like, don't try to do stuff with it. Because it was written to just be presented in kind of almost an opera way. I mean, the opera tradition definitely holds onto this much tighter than we do. But do you understand what I mean by that?

[27:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I do. I do. It's not that the performers back then didn't act. They just acted through the material more than imposing something on the material.

[28:00] David Armstrong: There it is. Yes, exactly. But I agree with you that this, Robert Weed has one volume, he's an opera, he was an opera singer. And in this show, he's partnered with another opera singer, Mimi Bissett, is that her name? Who is not my favorite voice. She's not a Barbara Cook.

[28:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, no, she has a very heavy, wide vibrato kind of voice, which sounds terrific on certain songs, but not so good everywhere else. But it's I'm not a big fan of that kind of classical voice to begin with. It's interesting, because I always knew about this show, and we're already diving into it, and people are probably like, what are you even talking about? But I always knew the show as Molly P, her show.

[28:47] David Armstrong: Yeah. But it's not really about her. She's the star, but the plot is not about her at all.

[28:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, that's really, it is interesting, because she doesn't really have a story. And what little story she has, her love story, happens at the last minute, with a character who only has maybe five lines.

[29:09] David Armstrong: Exactly. Okay, so before anybody else gets confused and stops listening, let's actually go through the show, because so many of these things are going to come up. So the show begins in Israel, go figure. And here's the thing, everybody, if you go to Spotify and you listen, and you type in Milk and Honey, and you click on that Jerry Herman original cast album, and you look at it, on the cover are three young, gorgeous dancers, very scantily clad, in kind of like a glissade-type position in the air, with gorgeous pointed feet. What this show is actually about, I have no idea why that is the cover of the show, because what this show is actually about is older people who have all been widowed.

[29:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Male-aged people, yeah.

[30:04] David Armstrong: Sure, thank you. Because they're not old, by all means, but they have all kind of come into a similar point in their lives, where they're like, I'm no spring chicken, and I think my romantic life is through.

[30:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, they're in their 40s and 50s, which is a lot older.

[30:23] David Armstrong: Which, to be fair, in 1960, is much different than a 50-year-old person today.

[30:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, yeah, 100%. And so, right here at the top of the show, we meet a woman by the name of Ruth, and Ruth has come to Israel, as with the tradition of many people who maybe took Yenta's words literally and said, next year in Jerusalem, they're coming to Israel to connect to their lives. This is the trip to Mecca. This is the opportunity to connect to your history. And it is her and this group of widows, and they're little pick-a-little-talk-a-little ladies who are now in Israel, right around Independence Day. As they're experiencing this new land, Ruth meets this man by the name of Phil, and Phil is played by Mr. Opera Voice.

[31:20] David Armstrong: They immediately have this connection. He has been living there, even though he is not from there. He's been living there for a while with his daughter and her husband. He's starting to like the place so much that he starts to teach her some of the local customs, the first one being the word shalom and what it means, which, because I'm in Hawaii, shalom immediately reminded me of aloha, right?

[31:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, serves the same function.

[31:48] David Armstrong: Yeah, it's not only a way to say hi, it is a spirit through which you interact with people around you. Right from the get-go, this song is like one of Jerry Herman's best freaking songs. It's so amazing. I love shalom so much.

[32:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I agree with you. It's such a beautiful melody, this lilting, and a perfect marriage of the lyric and the music together. It's so simple. What Jerry Herman can do is things seem simple, but it's actually really hard to pull that off. He doesn't get enough credit for that.

[32:27] David Armstrong: He really doesn't. Yeah. It's operating from that place of spiritual abundance, milk and honey, if you will, and then also has the sadness. I think that that's what I think is so gorgeous about Israeli music, or maybe just the Jewish tradition of music, is the inherent sadness in it that makes it beautiful and deep and more than just mindless optimism.

[32:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, there's always this.

[32:57] David Armstrong: Absolutely. It's a scale. It has its own scale, which is not the same as the Western scale that we're used to. I'm trying to think what the name of that scale is. Come to me in a minute. I do know, because I teach it. Some people call it the Jewish mode, is what some musicians will refer to it as. It's part of what I was talking about before. The Jewish mode and the blues scale are very, very similar. It's part of why I think Jewish musicians and African-American musicians, Black musicians, felt this affinity toward, and it's what brought this connection. Speaking of George Gershwin.

[33:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right. Exactly. It's because it sounded like what they were used to. It just was a little different. There's an incredible podcast. I highly recommend a radio show that you can listen to called Blues and Jews. And on that podcast, they play examples of early Jewish music, like a cantor in a synagogue performing, and then very early recordings of Black sharecroppers, early blues. And they're almost identical.

[34:12] David Armstrong: Oh, wow. And you just hear the connection between them. But in any event, I think there's this affinity that happens between it, which is what makes the show tune again.

[34:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow. That's so cool. I want to say one thing, though.

[34:27] David Armstrong: Yeah, please.

[34:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Because I agree with you that right off the bat, Jerry Herman, in his first Broadway show as a 29-year-old, or however old he was, is just hitting it out of the park. And it even happens with the Overture before that, which I think the Overture is really exciting and really thrilling. I've never been the type of person that's like, oh, I miss the Overtures. But when I listen to this one, or shows like this, I'm like, yeah, it really does have a place. And what you said earlier about him being able to match lyric to music so well, you listen to the Overture, and you can tell which song is going to have the words milk and honey before you even hear the song being sung. You can hear the orchestra literally singing milk and honey. It's a beautiful match.

[35:14] David Armstrong: Anyway, I interrupted your story.

[35:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, no. That's literally what the show is about, is about interrupting the story to bring context and tears. So Out of Shalom, Lots of Dancing for Independence Day. I mean, we're really kind of going into a Rodgers and Hammerstein type opportunity of bringing a culture and transporting the audience to a foreign quote unquote place that feels very strong in the show as well.

[35:41] David Armstrong: And also very much in that mode, I think in the Agnes de Mille mode of this, the choreographer here is Donald Sadler. But I was surprised at how much dancing there was in the show, and how much of it seemed to be not dream ballets, but dances that were expressing emotion, expressing, telling the story, especially in the term in regard to the character of David, who is the son-in-law of Phil.

[36:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, me too. And we'll talk more about that because we got to talk about Tommy Roll.

[36:17] David Armstrong: Yeah. As these two people, as Phil and Ruth are getting to know each other, we learn that Ruth's husband was a famous symphony conductor, like even Leonard Bernstein or something.

[36:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, sure. Has heard of him. And everybody in the place heard of him.

[36:39] David Armstrong: Yeah. He's famous. Yeah. Very famous. He has passed on. Phil's wife, and we will find this out later, still alive, still kicking. They are still married and she is living in France. And it seems like they've just drifted apart and have very little relationship left. But at the same time, she absolutely refuses to give him a divorce. And look, everybody, we're trouncing into black ketchup territory, if you know what I mean. So David, in case you don't know, I use the term black ketchup to refer to my great grandma, who had these bottles, these condiment bottles in her basement, because she was certain that they were still good and usable, even though the ketchup had turned black. She's like, it's fine.

It was that generation of not recognizing that it's time to throw something away because they wanted to hold on to it so dearly. And I have used that to talk about some of our musicals that probably don't need to be produced nowadays for various reasons. And Milk and Honey, unfortunately, has a lot of those types of plot lines where it just probably wouldn't be relevant to an audience right now. I don't understand why this evil woman in France wouldn't want to give her husband that she wants nothing to do with a divorce. I don't understand why everyone's so obsessed with getting married. You know, these things will probably keep it from being produced again.

[38:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, and of course, it's happening right at the dawn of the women's liberation movement. And if you read, I'm reading Mary Rogers book right now. And it's interesting that she talks about the same period and the same and she's how obsessed she was about being married and finding a man. It's just part of what's going on in the world at this time. We're coming out of the 50s, but we're still in the 50s, really, in the early 60s. It's a really interesting period of time. And this Broadway season, 61 to 62, is one of my favorites, because when we look at what came to Broadway in terms of musical theater to this year, you had How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, I Can Get for You Wholesale, Subways Are for Sleeping, all of which are kind of intellectual commentaries on American life.

You've got gorgeous, lush scores like Milk and Honey. You've got No Strings, which is pushing the boundaries in terms of multiracial relationships. And Diane Carroll becomes the first black woman to win a Tony Award for best leading actress in a musical. It's really this interesting push and pull. Kwaminas this season. It's a really fascinating time, where you see it's not quite into the transition, but it's right there in the middle. And because of it, really interesting stuff pops to the surface, rises to the surface.

[39:37] David Armstrong: Yeah. But you're right. A lot of it is not actually...

[39:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Producible.

[39:43] David Armstrong: ...addressing. Well, even No Strings, it has this interracial love story at the center of it, but there's no conflict about it being an interracial love story. It's not what you expect it to be when you think we're going to look at this show from 1962 or whatever it was, and this interracial romance, it's just taken for granted in a way. But I think it's because they're avoiding the conflict.

[40:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. It was enough to just even get it on the stage.

[40:12] David Armstrong: Exactly. And it was shocking, I'm sure, to see it. But they didn't need to talk about it, I guess.

[40:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[40:30] David Armstrong: fulfilled your destiny as a woman. So I think it's just, we don't agree with that today, but that is what they believed at the time. They believed it wholeheartedly.

[40:43] Exactly. Now, one of Ruth's friends, here comes Molly P., is named Clara, who is basically a Jewish Dolly Levi. She's what Barbra Streisand was doing in the movie.

[41:02] Only 20 years older.

[41:03] David Armstrong: Only 20 years older, exactly. And her husband is Jaime. She lost Jaime, and he was just this perfect husband. And she is really interested in Ruth connecting with Phil, and she encourages her to go with him to, I guess it's kind of up north, where his daughter, who's named Barbra, and Barbra's husband, David, all kind of are working as farmers. And so Ruth agrees to go for the weekend and kind of get to know them. In that area, in addition to David and Barbra, the daughter and son-in-law, is this guy by the name of Adi, I believe is how you say his name?

[41:51] Yeah, I think of—

[41:52] David Armstrong: Adi is about to be a father. His girlfriend, because they're not married yet, is about to have a baby. So they are planning to get married. He, however, is not happy with living there in the farm and represents this other voice in Milk and Honey, which is the one that, I don't know. A little voice of dissent and reality that everything is not quite so perfect here. We're in the middle of a desert and we're surrounded. This is the only sort of political aspect to the show, which I think is also why it's not so interesting to us today, is that they don't deal with the politics of the time, except in this little bit of commentary that he has about we're surrounded by people who hate us and there's danger here as well. He's always trying to get his girlfriend to eat Hershey bars so that the son will come out being attuned to westernized type things and hopefully want to live in a city near a hospital and those sorts of ideas.

[43:01] Yeah. And this is a group of farmers who are working together to settle the land. They're still working to create the country of Israel by doing this.

[43:07] David Armstrong: Water is very scarce.

[43:15] Yeah, they're in the middle of a desert to a certain extent. And that commentary that Jerry Herman put in was very, very smart. And he talked about that, too. He wrote the song Milk and Honey, and he thought, well, this is great. This is like an anthem. This could be the commercial for Israel. But then he said, that's not the whole story. I need to add some dissent. I need to show the other side of this. Which he does very effectively.

[43:39] Yeah, and a little counter melody, which is actually funny and pointed at the same time.

[43:45] David Armstrong: Yeah, yeah. He points out all the, this is not exactly heaven on earth.

[43:54] Yeah. For anybody who thinks that Jerry Herman is all optimism all the time, right? All of this is being told throughout the show through dance as well. This working the land, laying down pipes in the stage direction. So many pipes.

[44:10] David Armstrong: But it's all done through dance. It's very cool. And you look at the pictures of that, and you see them holding these big pipes. And obviously, they were using them as part of the choreography. They were using them, and the stories that they're laying pipes, I assume, to irrigate the land is what's happening.

[44:29] To bring water to these areas.

[44:31] David Armstrong: To bring water to the land. But Donald Sadler turns that into dance storytelling. And also, in the process, and I don't think this is an accident, puts a bunch of really hunky shirtless guys on stage in very, very short shorts, if you look at those pictures.

[44:52] Well, this is cool, though. I'm glad we're talking about this. Because if you just read the script, like I did, and maybe that's why my brain is there, the amount that being widowed, that getting married, that all of this relationship drama is talked about is almost exhausting. But you add to it this storytelling, because like you said, they're not really willing to talk about the political statements. But here they are being staged. These people, in a very Oklahoma way, are trying to settle the land, are trying to tame it, or at least work with it to find a place to live. And does it make you stronger and tanner and a little oily? Yeah. And that's okay, too.

[45:38] I don't know if you've looked at the pictures, but the beefcake aspect of the show just sort of jumps out at you in a way that you don't expect.

[45:45] No, that's what I'm saying. The cover work on Spotify, that's what I'm saying.

[45:48] David Armstrong: That's what they were using to sell it, exactly. They are selling it with sex. And I'm really interested to see what the audiences were actually feeling like the story gave them. Maybe they walked away just being like, weren't those dancers gorgeous? You know, I don't know.

[46:05] Well, but even Molly Peacock's character has a moment where she's surrounded by the shirtless boys, and she talks about that.

[46:10] David Armstrong: Yeah, so it's definitely something they were aware of.

[46:17] That's so cute. I love it.

[46:20] David Armstrong: She gets all sort of hot and bothered by it.

[46:23] Yeah, she has a great song here in the first act called Chin Up Ladies. I mean, just a perfect, a Jerry Herman song that I didn't know at all, to be honest. And it's great.

[46:34] David Armstrong: It's great. She's so fun. If people, listeners, you may not realize that we have already talked about Molly P. Like back in the day, we talked about Minnie's Boys. And she was supposed to be the Shelley Winters role. I mean, that's who they actually wanted to play, the mother of the Marx Brothers. So anyway, she's an incredible comedic talent. And also, she's got a great voice. Great actor.

[46:59] What we appreciate today is that she was a giant star in the Yiddish theater.

[47:03] Yes.

[47:03] David Armstrong: She did dozens from childhood on. She was somebody that they created shows around. She has dozens of Yiddish theater musicals that are written just for her as vehicles to show off all her talents, which apparently were many. It's frustrating because you can't really see it.

[47:24] She has a lot of dance breaks in this. It talks about her doing can-can kicks and all sorts of things.

[47:33] David Armstrong: She has at least two big giant dance features in the middle of each act of the show. And that struck me as well. It's like, wow, they've designed this show to show off Molly Picon's dancing, which I don't know much about. Who knew that that was part of what her bag of tricks was? But basically, if you went to see her, you expected her to dance.

[47:56] Wow.

[47:56] David Armstrong: And it was one of the things of the Yiddish stars, almost all the Yiddish stars were triple threats. And I think maybe that idea came from there. They sang, they danced, they acted, they were comedians. They did all men and women. That was just expected that that's what they would be able to do.

[48:12] That's beautiful. I love that. What a great tradition to bring to musical theater, because we have another true, true 100% triple threat in the show, Tommy Rall. He's the one who's playing the son-in-law, David. And I always knew him as a dancer because in my flop book, they would always talk about the musical Juno and how Tommy Rall had this amazing dance solo in this flop musical that it was one of the most incredible things you've ever seen in musical theater that few people saw in musical theater.

[48:41] And so I always thought of him as a dancer. And then I listened to this, him singing the song in the second act. What is that called? I Will Follow You.

[48:48] And the title song.

[48:51] David Armstrong: And the title song. Yeah, exactly. Milk and Honey. A true trained tenor on top of it all. Speaking of Barbra Streisand, he is the prince in—

[49:02] Exactly. So I wrote down, he was in nine Broadway shows. And in those shows, and he starts as a dancer, as a chorus boy, basically as a dancer. He dances for Jerome Robbins. He dances for Gower Champion. He dances for Agnes DeMille, multiple shows with Jerome Robbins. So he's the real deal dancer, which of course we can then see in the movies.

[49:23] Because he did a lot of dancing in the movies.

[49:26] David Armstrong: Star dancing. He plays Bill Calhoun in the movie Kiss Me, Kate.

[49:31] Phenomenally. And my favorite clip of his, he's also in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. But my favorite clip is, there's a clip with him and Bob Fosse doing this incredible duet in Give a Girl a Break, which is one of the greatest pieces of dancing you will ever see. It's a challenge dance between Tommy Rall and Bob Fosse. And it is staggeringly good.

[49:55] In a not very good movie. Most people won't know it, but you can find it easily on YouTube.

[50:01] Okay. Definitely sharing that with everybody. Thank you for the recommendation.

[50:04] David Armstrong: But you're right. And he sings very well in those movies.

[50:07] And he sings his face off.

[50:09] David Armstrong: But even in those movies, you don't know he's going to sing like this. Like a very legit, incredible sound. It was quite amazing.

[50:21] Because Robert Weed can't dance like Tommy Rall.

[50:24] That is exactly right. Tommy Rall can sing almost as well, sing pretty comparably to Robert Weed, exactly.

[50:31] Incredible. Go Tommy Rall. A true pioneer.

[50:34] And so handsome. If you watch him in Kiss Me, Kate, he's great. He's terrific.

[50:43] David Armstrong: Holding his own in the comedy scenes with Ann Miller and all that kind of stuff.

[50:47] So at the end of the first act, amidst all of the hunky dancing and laying pipe, which just sounds X-rated, we get to this wedding. This gorgeous, very traditional wedding. And what happens is Phil asks Ruth to stay.

[51:07] And finally tells her that he's married.

[51:09] David Armstrong: Yeah. Which is the basis of all the drama for the rest of the show. Can she feel good about staying with this man? Marrying him here religiously, but not necessarily legally, because he will still be married to this woman in France. Does that make sense?

[51:28] Anyway.

[51:31] Yeah. I think that's exactly right. But they go to this wedding of Adi and his pregnant girlfriend, who I can't remember her name. I feel bad. Who are not married. She's nine months pregnant, and they're just getting married now.

[51:44] Exactly. Nobody seems to have a problem with it, by the way.

[51:47] David Armstrong: No, it's very interesting. The sexual politics of the show are very confused in that way, because this seems to be something that they... And they say, it's not a big deal here. We didn't even need to get married, but we're going to. Phil sings this song called Let's Not Waste a Moment. And this song then goes into the wedding sequence. And it gives me chills just thinking about it. This is some of the best musical writing of anything in this Broadway season.

[52:17] Yeah. It's a wonderful sequence.

[52:19] David Armstrong: It's an incredible sequence. I highly recommend everybody at least listen to it once, because you just don't hear stuff like this every day.

[52:27] And that song starts a Jerry Herman tradition, I think, which is this idea. It really made me think of Kiss Her Now from Dear World. We only have this moment. Do not let this moment pass by. It only takes a moment.

[52:43] Yeah, before the parade passes by. We have to do this now.

[52:48] Now, now, now.

[52:49] David Armstrong: Don't waste a moment. It's interesting that that becomes a theme through his shows.

[52:53] Yeah, that's so true.

[52:54] What I thought was fascinating, which you only know from reading the script, is this sequence culminates with Phil and Ruth going up the stairs to bed. He's not pressuring her in any way, but she's made her peace with, I love this man, and this is what we're going to do. Which I thought was really interesting that the curtain falls on this.

[53:21] Them leaving the wedding to go do their own thing.

[53:22] David Armstrong: This wedding juxtaposed with them going up to have sex. I'm not sure exactly what we're supposed to feel about that, whether that's supposed to be a positive or a negative in terms of the way they felt about it at the time. Are we ending on a crisis, or is it an upending or a downending? I wasn't sure.

[53:43] Me either, because I get the feeling that we're supposed to feel like, oh, what's going to happen? Is she going to be okay with this? But once again, social politics are so different now, there's not a lot.

[54:00] David Armstrong: She is not at peace with it. She runs away in the next scene.

[54:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: By the way, Barbara has this whole meltdown, too, of the idea of Ruth staying with her father in Israel triggers her into this whole meltdown of how much she hates being there.

[54:16] David Armstrong: Which I thought was really not prepared for at all.

[54:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, it feels like it comes out of nowhere.

[54:26] David Armstrong: She just seemed like she loved Israel. She loved being there until all of a sudden, she doesn't. Maybe that just isn't on the page, but was there in the show.

[54:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I don't think so. I just think that Barbara seems like a really confusing character.

[54:50] David Armstrong: But yeah, I do think that they maybe wanted another voice of dissent, of also maybe doubt that goes into Ruth's mind. Because right at the beginning of Act Two, Ruth decides she's out. Phil's like, Ruth, Ruth, where are you? And she's gone. And Barbara's like, yeah, she left. She's gone to Tel Aviv, the big city, with her group of widow friends. In Tel Aviv, Phil finds Ruth. I don't know how he finds her in this huge city, but they find each other and have kind of the discussion that you would expect. It's not very interesting. But what is interesting is our favorite Molly, aka Clara, favorite Molly P, finds this new guy. His name's Saul, short for Solomon. And she suddenly has this possibility to have love. And so she sings a song called Hymn to Jaime, in which she has it out with her dead husband to see if maybe in a Dolly Levi sort of way, she can get his permission to get married again.

[55:41] David Armstrong: Yeah, the parallels of talking to Ephraim and asking him to let her go are so clear. Almost carbon copy.

[55:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, except that Jerry Herman hasn't written Hello, Dolly! yet. And I don't know even how aware he was of the matchmaker at this point, which comes from the matchmaker. I know it's hard to say. And of course, Jerry Herman is very influenced by his mother, who is probably contemporary with Molly Picon. Many of his characters and many of the things that he writes are inspired by his mother. He always talks about open a new... It's today was her expression. She came home one day from school, and she had a party laid out. And he said, Why are we having the party? And she said, It's today. And so, he drew on this stuff throughout his life. It's very interesting.

[56:51] David Armstrong: So, I wonder how much of this character is inspired by his own mother. Because once again, this show comes out of their trip to Israel, Jerry Herman's and the book writers. It's one of the few shows that's not based on source material, which is partly maybe why it's...

[57:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Structurally not too sound.

[57:13] David Armstrong: Exactly. Because I always say it's really hard to write a story, almost impossible to create a really effective story. And it's really hard to write a musical. And if you put those two things together, you probably will not succeed. And most shows that were not based on source material have not succeeded.

[57:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Great point. I will also go ahead and say that I think that this is miraculous. I think the fact that he was able to write such a compelling widowed character, and that David Merrick showed up and saw it. I can't help but see the blueprint of God or the universe or whatever you want to say, laying the groundwork to say, This guy needs to write Hello, Dolly! and change the world.

[58:00] David Armstrong: Well, of course, David Merrick has already optioned The Matchmaker to turn into a musical. So it's not hard to imagine him sitting in the theater, seeing him behind me and going, Oh, that's talking to Ephraim.

[58:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, this is it. This is the guy.

[58:16] David Armstrong: So whether Jerry Herman made the connection or not, David Merrick seems to have. And I think that's pretty inspired.

[58:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: But it's a pretty great piece of special material. I mean, he's really adept at writing to Molly Picon's strengths, but he clearly knows how to write for a star.

[58:36] David Armstrong: Clearly. That's a great way of saying it. He knows how to write for a star. Give her what she needs to do.

[58:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: What she needs to do is to say yes to Saul, who also just happens to be a sweet little man who is in diamonds and has a fortune. So Molly P and Saul get married.

[58:58] David Armstrong: And the end of the show, which just happens so, so fast, is that Phil realizes it would be wrong for Ruth to live with him without him getting a divorce first. So he, at the airport, is about ready to go to France to ask his wife for a divorce. Ruth hopes that they will be able to come together in the future. And that's it. I mean, that's kind of it, right?

[59:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, it definitely hangs on what maybe felt more compelling at the time of they are in love, they're committed to each other, and he's going to go and make it happen. Somehow, he's going to get this divorce and make it happen so they can finally be together.

[59:42] David Armstrong: Do you think that he does? Look, I still don't understand why the French woman doesn't want to give him a divorce. So I say I'm thinking that this is going to be no problem.

[59:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I think it implies that he will, because he's our hero, he will do whatever it takes to get that divorce and they will eventually be together. But it is interesting that the show ends on this note of-

[1:00:05] David Armstrong: Question mark?

[1:00:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Big question mark, exactly. It ends with a question mark. Will or will they not get together?

[1:00:14] David Armstrong: Yeah. It's a really interesting show that I think if we're looking at cultural significance, brings Israel to the forefront of musical theater, like we talked about for one of the first times. It puts Jerry Herman on a Broadway stage, writing about widows that will ultimately pay off big time in Hello, Dolly! And then there are these really glorious pieces of just musical magic. And when I look back and think of the things that I wish I could have seen in this show, I'm going to say Molly Picon, for sure, would have loved to see her do her thing because they created room for it everywhere throughout the show. And then there is this one sequence that we didn't talk about, which is when David, after Barbara, the daughter, has her meltdown about not liking being in this desert farmland.

David, her husband, says, okay, well, then let's leave because I want you to be happy. And she's like, no, I would never ask you to do that. And he said, no, I feel like it's my responsibility. And so then she leaves. And there's this whole dance sequence in which Tommy Rall comes to terms with how deeply he feels the need to be a farmer and to be working this land. And the pull between that and becoming a businessman in America and how that preys on his identity, and he dances it all out. And I would have loved to have seen that. I would have loved, loved, loved to have seen that.

[1:02:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I agree with you. And reading that description, you just go, I want to see how they did this. He dances his emotions, which is interesting because that's what he got acclaimed for in Juno, was a very similar dance piece of dance as emotional therapy.

[1:02:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Expression. Yeah. But I'm confused. What did they end up doing?

[1:02:11] David Armstrong: Expression. Yeah, really.

[1:02:11] David Armstrong: No one knows.

[1:02:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Does he stay or does she go? What's the end of their story? I was not clear about that.

[1:02:18] David Armstrong: Nor was I. That's why I said the ending happened so quickly because who knows. It sounds like they're staying, but I don't know if they're going to be in the city, like if they're moving to Tel Aviv or if they're staying in the farm because Phil was going to build a house and then he'd stopped building the house. I was actually talking about Tommy Rawls' character. That's what I mean. I don't know if they continued working that land up there because there was a project and then it got paused so that he could go to France. I don't know. That part was a little confusing. Again, maybe something happened physically that we don't, that's not on the page, but is there. But I would love to go back and see Tommy Rawls in that show because it seems like a Broadway star that we just don't talk about and even though we see him in movies and he's fantastic, he doesn't get talked about much there either.

[1:03:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, it's true. The other thing I would love to go back and see is when Molly Picon went away to make a movie, Hermione Gingold replaced her.

[1:03:22] David Armstrong: That's right. Which I can't quite imagine.

[1:03:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, that seems like a completely different type, right?

[1:03:36] David Armstrong: Yes, although this is much younger.

[1:03:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, that's true. That is true. This is Hermione Gingold. I guess although she's already made Gigi, but if you think of her in Gigi, she's already established because that's the 50s. So it's post-Gigi. It just feels vocally a bit rangy for Hermione. And does she kick up her heels in that way?

[1:03:56] David Armstrong: Maybe she drops down in the split. Do they revise that? I don't know.

[1:03:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I don't know. Yeah, do they lift her up into a giant lift at the end of the number?

[1:04:04] David Armstrong: But she looks pretty great. There's some pictures of some publicity photos of her, not in the show, but pre-publicity photos.

[1:04:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Around that time.

[1:04:15] David Armstrong: Around that, of her with the other stars.

[1:04:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's right. She looks like she'd be fun, but I would love to be able to go back and see that. And so this was a hit. Here we are kind of talking about it as something that's not producible anymore, but it ran.

[1:04:24] David Armstrong: Yeah, it ran 545 performances.

[1:04:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's great. Which is modest, but successful. Apparently, it didn't entirely make back its investment, but it was a successful show. It was a hit.

[1:04:42] David Armstrong: That's really great. David, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for talking me through it.

[1:04:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: My pleasure.

[1:04:48] David Armstrong: You are a fount of knowledge, but also I can tell how much you love it. You love the actual art form, which I think is even more important than knowing everything about it.

[1:04:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely. It's only interesting to me because I love it so much. I mean, that's what makes it fascinating. And the same thing with you. That's why I do, as you said at the beginning, I think there's a kinship between our two podcasts, because we are often looking to the past of Broadway and trying to really deeply understand it, but also celebrate it to a great extent.

[1:05:25] David Armstrong: Agreed. Here's to more.

[1:05:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: As always, if you have recommendations for shows you'd like us to cover on a musical theater podcast, you can always email me at amusicalpodcasts at gmail.com. Don't forget to follow us on social media. We're on Instagram and Twitter at amusicalpodcast. We're also on TikTok. We've got Patreon exclamation point, where for only $1 a month, you can receive bonus content on top of supporting the regular show. We have the TeePublic store, where the profits we get from those great designs will go to Broadway Cares, Equity Fights AIDS. What else do we have? We have our playlist on Spotify. We have a holiday one that just came out. We announced that on social media, so go ahead and listen to that. Since it's the end of the year, it's the last episode of the year, I want to give a shout out to Michael Willett for doing our theme music and our artwork.

He's the best. Shout out to all of you. Thank you so much for being a part of this wonderful 2022. I'm really, really pleased with what we were able to do this year and talk about and explore, and it wouldn't be possible without you. Love you lots. Thanks for being part of this podcasting community. Hey, David, tell us about your show. How do we follow you and follow it?

[1:06:37] David Armstrong: The show is called Broadway Nation. You can find it on the Broadway Podcast Network and everywhere that podcasts are found. You can also connect with me. We have a big Facebook group, more than 2,000 members on Facebook, people very passionate about musical theater connected to the podcast. Also, you can find me on Instagram and Twitter as well.

[1:07:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: David, you're the best. Have a wonderful holiday. Merry Christmas.

[1:07:06] David Armstrong: Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah to you.

[1:07:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Everybody out there, remember, shalom.