Review: Barry Manilow’s ‘Harmony’ Strikes a Bum Note on Broadway
5 / 10
However, the musical—music by Manilow, book and lyrics by Sussman, directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle—only makes an occasionally compelling case that the Harmonists (Ari Leshnikoff, Erich Collin, Erwin “Chopin” Bootz, Robert Biberti, Harry Frommerman, and Cantor Josef Roman Cykowski, aka “Rabbi”) should be better remembered by history. The unevenly staged Harmony is a shakily constructed set of misfiring elements, whose most compelling beats around Nazism, Antisemitism, and bigotry—all points resoundingly and rightly made—feel imposed and didactic rather than flowing naturally from the source material.
