Before I try to convince you of the virtues of Harmony, Barry Manilow’s musical (which was on through May 15) about a 1930s German singing group with three Jewish members that gets caught in the gears of Nazism, allow me to emphasize that it’s not a jukebox musical and it’s not at all campy. Which is a shame, because I expected to be able to regale you with a string of puns: “Can’t Heil Without You,” “Looks Reich We Made It,” etc. Yet the compositions in the show, which are highly polished Broadway tunes rather than bombastic Seventies easy listening, betray no hint of Manilow’s signature style. The show does owe a debt to a hallmark of the Seventies, but said classic is Cabaret, not “Copacabana.”
The Comedian Harmonists were a vocal group of six men formed in Weimar-era Berlin who became such celebrities that they starred in more than twenty films, sang with Marlene Dietrich, and toured internationally. Manilow and his longtime collaborator, the show’s librettist/lyricist Bruce Sussman, who together have been tweaking the show for a quarter of a century, have devised a cunning range of songs for both the boys’ cabaret act and to illustrate their off-stage dramas.
The offerings range from snappy, sometimes slightly naughty comic numbers suitable for debauchery-seeking Weimar nightclub audiences to lush ballads such as the standout duet “Where You Go,” which is
