Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 18, 2022

If Memory wasnt already a marquee name in showtunes, Barry Manilow probably would have used the title for a song in his new musical.

Now playing at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Harmony, about the Comedian Harmonists, a sextet of German singer-comedians, is also all about memory both historys short recall for a popular act erased by the Nazis, and the enduring guilt of the groups last surviving member.

A pre-show banner, bearing a cartoon of our entertainers, gives us the date Dec. 16, 1933, the evening the Harmonists played Carnegie Hall. We open on a memory of that night, recalled decades later by our narrator, Rabbi (Chip Zien). But Carnegie Hall was a high point, and Rabbis here to tell you why it didnt last, and, more to the point, why youve never heard of the Comedians, a story that involves some tragic lows.

Rabbi whose real name was Josef Roman Cycowski, and who enrolled in seminary in his native Poland before deciding it would be nice to sing in a major key for once takes us back to where it all began for the Harmonists: Berlin, 1927. From there, the show, dotted with inventive vaudeville performances that range from a marionette satire of the Third Reich to a waiter-themed burlesque, charts the groups success and ultimate unraveling in the wake of the Nuremberg Laws that targeted its three Jewish members.

Photo by JULIETA CERVANTES

Chip Zien, as the older Rabbi, winds back the clock.

A moment to jog our own memory. Its something of a misnomer to call Harmony a new musical. Barry Manilow here the man who wrote the songs and arranged them and Bruce Sussman, his regular lyricist and now librettist, have been working on a musical about the Comedian Harmonists for about 25 years, over three times as long as the Harmonists were active. The result of this long process is a show that, directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, is highly polished in parts and ragged in others. Its pretty easy to tell which bits have been tempered by time and which are new and need refinement.

The highlights are the Harmonists group numbers, both their kinetic formation and their cabaret antics as a rising troupe. The six men Harry, the ringleader (Zal Owen); Young Rabbi (Danny Kornfeld); Erich (Eric Peters), a would-be doctor with an endless supply of famous family friends; piano player Chopin (Blake Roman); opera buffa bass Bobby (Sean Bell); and handsome Bulgarian Lesh (Steven Telsey) are phenomenal in their harmonies, synchronized in their movements and impeccable with their comic timing.

Both Sussmans lyrics and Manilows score shine in the interwar idiom of swoony movie musical love songs and jazz-inflected comedy. Manilow penned a Liszt pastiche and a Josephine Baker mambo, and with Carlyles choreo, they work like gangbusters.

Photo by Julieta Cervantes

The Harmonists (Eric Peters, Blake Roman, Zal Owen, Steven Telsey, Sen Bell and Danny Kornfeld) cut their comedic teeth in the number How Can I Serve You, Madam?

Strangely, this consummate pair of soft pop writers largely fall down with their ballads, which factor into the romantic plot, between Rabbi and his love interest, Mary (Sierra Boggess) and Chopin and his firebrand squeeze, Ruth (Jessie Davidson, an unconvincing composite character). Ruth and Mary, whose struggles come from marrying a gentile and a Jew respectively, turn the corner somewhat in a duet called Where You Go, inspired by lines from the Book of Ruth and the rare sequence that taps the full storytelling potential of the stage.

When Harmony tries to do politics and context a ham-fisted parade of twirling red flags during a Communist rally in a number gutsily called This Is Our Time (Sondheim is spinning) it feels excessive and out of nowhere. This time could be better spent showing how exactly the Comedians went from covering boxers with cloches a sort of Weimar-era Dick in a Box at a German club to headlining Carnegie Hall, a step we somehow miss.

Dealing with Rabbis regrets, in songs called Threnody, the show flounders with a weird pseudo-recitative, as poor Chip Zien, virtuosically shouldering this clumsy material, recalls pivotal exchanges tied to the groups undoing. He flagellates himself unduly, and also sings the Shema, in the most explicitly Jewish content one has ever seen from Barry Manilow.

At times the Jewishness references to pastrami, chopped liver, lyrics like Where I grew up the people threw/A Pogrom every month or two or that rhyme shtetl and settle panders a bit too hard. Historical cameos from Einstein and Marlene Dietrich (the names in the playbill are decoys, the overworked Zien plays almost all of them) are far too Jersey Boys in their cuteness.

Photo by JULIETA CERVANTES

The boys with Josephine Baker (the phenomenal Ana Hoffman).

But there are moments, no doubt helped along by Beowulf Boritts mirror-wall set, that recall some of the better parts of Cabaret.

The second act crackdown on the group, in the person of an Oberstumfuhrer played by Zak Edwards, plays well, particularly when followed by the number Come to the Fatherland. In that ditty the boys, appalled at being referred to as ambassadors for the Reich, string themselves up like puppets and sing a scathing tourism ad while performing in Copenhagen. If Sussmans lyrics arent quite Fred Ebb-level (If youre good at tushie-kissin/or maybe youre missin a screw/come to the Fatherland! Unless youre a Jew,) they seem right for the boys who alternated between appearing in tails and in their underwear.

What sells the song, and much of the drama that follows, is the same element that made the Comedian Harmonists a success. The chemistry of the six actors together can weather creaky dialogue or awkward dramatic beats. When they sing as one, you feel the loss of these mens chapter in history. The strained metaphor of an interfaith act, joining in music before the dissonance of a regime that thrived on both conformity and division, becomes vivid.

The groups talent as a unit is the true magic of the show, and what youll remember when you leave the theater long after youve forgotten the melodies.

Harmony opens at the New York Theatre Folksbienes Edmond J. Safra Hall at the Museum of Jewish Heritage April 14. Tickets and information can be found here.

Original post:

Barry Manilow gives us harmony and Hebrew in a sometimes hammy musical - Forward

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