Sweet Harmony

O ne of New York City’s best theatrical offerings is so far off Broadway that it’s almost in the water.

The National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage abuts Battery Park, hard by the Hudson River. The trek to Manhattan Island’s watery southwestern edge is worth the effort to see a dazzling new musical — Harmony.

This English-language show tells the captivating, true story of the Comedian Harmonists, a mixed Gentile and Jewish men’s singing sextet and comic act. “They were a cross between Manhattan Transfer and the Marx Brothers,” said pop star Barry Manilow, one of Harmony’s prime movers.

As the excellent 1997 German feature film Comedian Harmonists confirms, this group was wildly popular across Europe, beginning in 1927. Their records sold like latkes, as did tickets to their motion pictures and sold-out stage shows. They performed with the legendary Josephine Baker and even enjoyed a successful appearance at Carnegie Hall, generating much excitement among executives at the National Broadcasting Company, then a powerhouse in a red-hot new medium called radio. The Comedian Harmonists’ future was so bright that they had to wear shades.

And then a guy named Adolf Hitler walked in.

Harmony’s splendid and attractive leads offer first-rate music, acting, singing, dancing, comedy, and then . . . lots of drama. Actors Sean Bell, Danny Kornfeld, Zal Owens, Eric Peters, Blake Roman, and Steven Telsey exude boyish, winning charm. Their spirited antics are leavened by both the mounting menace of their surroundings and an unusually talented supporting cast that reflects growing angst as the world presses in from all sides. Jessie Davidson and Sierra Boggess memorably grapple with these multiplying challenges as Ruth and Mary, the wives of two Harmonists.

Chip Zien delivers one magic moment after another as the older version of a Harmonist nicknamed Rabbi, recalling these experiences in hindsight, late in life. Grafton Burke plays multiple cameo roles, often to humorous effect, as these musicians encounter real-life historical luminaries during their salat days.

Meanwhile, Andrew O’Shanick is riveting as a young Nazi Standartenführer. He devolves from a fan of the group who, initially, overlooks the ethnicity of its Jewish members. Alas, he increasingly finds that detail intolerably perpendicular to the regime’s priorities.

Linda Cho and Ricky Lurie’s costumes are elegant, colorful, and drab, as shifting conditions require. Beowulf Boritt’s scenic design confirms how even sparingly used pieces of furniture, waved red flags, or a gangplank can conspire with the willing suspension of disbelief to transport an audience to European salons, a Marxist rally on the streets of Berlin, or a Manhattan pier with a cruise ship moored beside it in the Hudson.

Video design by Batwin & Robin Productions richly amplifies Harmony’s storytelling, especially in dramatizing several train rides that accelerate the action. One of them, astonishingly, might have turned world history on its head — had someone done something.

Warren Carlyle’s direction and choreography keep this entire enterprise chugging and leaping along.

Harmony is the product of a 25-year-gestation by its two fathers. Manilow and his longtime songwriting partner, Barry Sussman, collaborated on this project, off and on, for decades. Perhaps for the better, the result is not Weimar at the Copacabana.

Manilow’s rich score recalls the Jazz Age and the sounds of traditional Broadway productions. Sussman’s lyrics are often witty and sometimes deeply moving: The Harmonists lampoon Nazi ideology with this little gem: “If you are Anglo-Saxon, and your hair is flaxen, we want you to breed!”

This show just earned eight Outer Critics Circle nominations, including one for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical. These and its many other accolades are richly deserved.

Harmony’s limited engagement ends May 15, although talk of its eventual graduation to Broadway is encouraging and merited. Hope springs eternal.