The Ethyl Barrymore Theater was abuzz: Michael Feinstein, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Lorna Luft were among the theater elite at Harmony’s opening night. Sutton Foster said she was ready to be evil, stepping in to bake meat pies as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. Judd Hirsch sat with Marilu Henner, the Taxi team to appear on The View later this week. Remarking that she last saw Chip Zien, Harmony’s narrator, on July 15, 1974—exact in her memory as she has one of those special gifts—"It was an audition,” Henner said. All this before the evening’s star, Barry Manilow, arrived.
Memory is a key ingredient of Harmony: The Holocaust’s mantra, Never Forget—echoed, asserted—but in a musical! Yes, Barry Manilow wrote the songs for this show, many years in the making about a hugely successful sestet of singers in Europe as Hitler was on the rise. Are the songs of the Comedy Harmonists ones that the whole world will sing—yes, many will live on, material for vocalists everywhere. First-rate Broadway tunes are not the only reason to see Harmony. Accompanied by his longtime lyricist Bruce Sussman, and director/choreographer Warren Carlyle, Manilow framed a tale well-timed for this moment, a memory play that insists upon an individual’s reckoning with totalitarian regimes and war. Bad things happen when bystanders say nothing.
Chip Zien’s character –based on the real-life cantor in California called Rabbi who recently died at age 98--escaped the Nazis, the only Harmonist to live to old age. Survivor guilt is the occasion for telling the past, mulling over the possibilities for a different ending. Harmony starts with the group’s auditions, youthful aspirations, and love. Beowulf Borritt’s sets form backdrops for the entertainers’ singing their way through Europe, and for the repression of Jews. But the danger, palpable now, will pass, right? Two of the Harmonists marry, Rabbi to Mary and “Chopin” to Ruth, a Bolshevik activist and a Jew. A joyful double wedding, disrupted by thugs breaking glass, recalls a Fiddler on the Roof scene. At the height of fame, they came to New York and might have performed with Josephine Baker. Onstage, in a fantasy, they do.
A highlight is a duet sung by the wives, Mary (Sierra Boggess) and Ruth (Julie Benko), “Where You Go,” after their husbands try to persuade them to leave, hoping to ensure their safety. The song, referencing the Old Testament’s Book of Ruth, resonates of the fragility of love, and their dire choices. Foils, the Catholic Mary sticks with Rabbi (his younger self Danny Kornfeld); Ruth lets Chopin (Blake Roman) know that while she may leave—better for him as a non-Jew, she will haunt him always. Played by Benko, she’s an irrepressible memory.
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