Barry Manilow’s Original Musical Is Coming To The Folksbiene
Barry Manilow Image by Getty/Emma McIntyre/Staff
By PJ Grisar August 19, 2019
Barry Manilow has a particular talent for upbeat — and unserious — musical storytelling.
His easy-listening songs are populated by showgirls named Lola and men named Rico who wear diamonds, as featured in his iconic “Copacabana,” or balladeers lamenting the loss of a legendarily selfless lover, as in “Mandy.” His famed “Stuck on a Band-Aid” jingle is the soundtrack to our childhood scrapes.
But when you learn that Manilow has long been at work on a musical about an integrated vaudeville act in Weimar Germany whose existence is threatened by the ascendance of the Nazi party, you may be right to be skeptical.
The musical “Harmony,” developed by Manilow and his longtime creative partner Bruce Sussman, will make its New York debut in 2020 in a limited run produced by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manahattan. The show has been in the works for some time, The New York Times reports, with a run at California’s La Jolla Playhouse in 1997 followed by a 2003 out-of-town run in Philadelphia. But the musical was thrown off its Broadway course post-Philly due to a lack of funds.
The show, with music by Manilow and a libretto by Sussman, concerns the true story of the Comedian Harmonists, a sextet of Jewish and gentile men who blended comedy with soaring harmonies and became popular recording artists, film performers and an in-demand live act. The group’s success was hampered after Hitler’s assumption of power, leading to their breakup in 1934.
Manilow announced the Folksbiene run of the show, which was last seen in Atlanta in 2013, onstage at “Manilow Broadway,” his revue at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. That show closed on August 17, but those who want more from the man who writes the songs will get another chance when “Harmony” begins previews on February 11, 2020.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Barry Manilow wrote “Sweet Caroline.” He didn’t, Neil Diamond did. We got our Jewish easy-listening legends crossed.
PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture fellow. He can be reached at [email protected]
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
