Political animals

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.”