There’s a narrator in “Harmony,” Bruce Sussman and Barry Manilow’s musical now enjoying at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theater—an aged rabbi, performed ably by Chip Zien, who tells the true story of six younger males in Berlin who shaped a comedic singing group in 1927 that rose to worldwide fame on the identical time that the Nazis got here to energy. The rabbi was certainly one of three Jewish males within the group, referred to as the Comedian Harmonists, and he implies all through the play that he was the one survivor.
You’d suppose, then, that the 2 and half hours of motion up on the stage could be sorrowful and terrifying, and in the end tragic, however they’re not. The play, equal elements glitzy and superficial, consists largely of jaunty songs, written by Manilow, that the group sings on phases — together with Carnegie Hall — as they journey the world. The Nazis don’t appear to thoughts that there are Jews sharing their air (actually, some Nazis are followers of the music), and allow them to come and go lengthy after most Jews and their artist compatriots have been stripped of their jobs and their passports.
That’s a part of the purpose of the play — that none of those younger males took the Nazi menace critically sufficient — however there’s not way more plot than that. One of the lads marries a younger Jewish lady within the resistance, performed with type by Julie Benko, and so they’re blissfully pleased till the wedding is destroyed by his passivity within the face of such grave hazard. That’s the excessive level of the narrative, until you embody schticky visitor appearances by Albert Einstein and Josephine Baker.
Most of characters come off as pretty hackneyed — the rabbi, the physician, the whorehouse piano participant — however all of the voices are stunning. Manilow can write love track, and there are a number of.
Still, the play — which options elaborate however cheap-looking units by Beowolf Boritt and hanging lighting by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, in addition to director Warren Carlyle’s easy however efficient choreography — runs manner too lengthy, and sacrifices story, emotional depth and connection for musical numbers that shortly start to sound alike.
It’s unlucky that “Harmony,” which premiered in San Diego in 1997 and had an Off Broadway run in 2022, has opened in the midst of the Hamas-Israel battle, when unspeakable violence in opposition to Jews is so recent and antisemitism is on the rise around the globe. For many, the singing and dancing in direction of the Holocaust and what looks like the approaching deaths of the principle characters will really feel lower than enjoyable, and one of many many Nazi salutes within the route of the viewers will undoubtedly set off trauma.