First produced at the La Jolla Playhouse in 1997, then revived last year at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, the Barry Manilow musical, Harmony has been fighting the good fight in its quest to make it to Broadway. Its latest stop on the showbiz trail is the Ahmanson Theater, whose associate artistic director Neel Keller had worked on Harmonywhen he was with La Jolla Playhouse.
The much-traveled and -refurbished musical tells the story of The Comedian Harmonists, a Berlin-based vocal sextet that came to international fame in the early 1930s only to be shut down a few years later by the Nazis, who took exception to the group's three Jewish members. With a book and lyrics by Bruce Sussman, Manilow's longtime collaborator, Harmony recreates the glory days of the Harmonists, who were roughly the Beatles of their day. The youthful cast puts across the first act's jazzy, klezmer-tinged songs in exuberant fashion, blending their voices with impeccable timing and musicality. But in act two, when the horrific events of the Hitler era begin to impinge on them, the group's songs darken and turn inward, especially when their ties to each other and to their loved ones are tested (Josef, the lead singer, is married to a Gentile, for example).
The theme that Manilow and Sussman tackle here is the quest for harmony in a disharmonious time. The Harmonists may have had their careers destroyed by the Nazis, but they battled with everything in them to hold on to their humanity -- and in some cases their religion; Josef (real name Roman Cycowski) eventually became a cantor in a Palm Springs synagogue.
Harmony looks at the history of the Harmonists in a personal and fresh way. Thanks to the show's sprightly and touching score -- and, above all, to its large, multi-talented cast, Manilow’s musical may finally make it to New York after all.
