Video: Go Inside Rehearsals for HARMONY on Broadway

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway world

Following a critically acclaimed sold-out run off-Broadway, Barry Mo and Bruce Sussman's new musical Harmony is coming to Broadway

directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle. It'll open on November 13th at the Barrymore Theater

and we drop by the rehearsal room to meet the company and bring you a sneak peek

Harmony is a beautiful blend. Three Jews and three Gentiles come together

They form a close harmony singing group in Berlin in 1927. They make 13 movies

They tour the world and no one's heard of them. It's like, that's why I got to tell the story

You know, when the show deals with anti-Semitism in a really meaningful way

So I need to shine a light on that and make sure that that can never have

happen again. And that's what I'm able to do as director of Harmony

You're coming back to Broadway and Harmony. How excited are you? I'm so excited. This is my first press event in a really long time, Richie. I'm just like

this is really, really, and this show is incredibly special. It's incredibly special to me

I've been involved since 2019, before the pandemic. And that we're now getting to introduce

this to the world. It's the time. Yeah. I am so excited to be able to play this

part and to hang out with these young harmonists, those guys are killing me

They work their butts off and they dance and sing all at the same time And this is like thrilling And besides that like for me the theater Broadway my home You know I been you know there some television in there and stuff and things

But being backstage at the Baramore, which is where we're going to be, it's just, it just feels like it's like home

And we've developed this magnificent family because we did the show downtown

So it's, you know, Sierra's around Julie's here now. And it's like, it's just a big family event telling a story that I think is so important

And big, I think it's a big story. I just, I can't, you know, I'm pinching myself

It's fantastic. I love coming to rehearsal every day. I love getting to work with Warren Carlyle, who is just such a wonderful collaborator

And he is so open and he wants me to bring in my ideas and my thoughts and find ways to incorporate them

And, you know, I come in with a lot of ideas. Some of them are not so good. His job is to go, no, no, we're not doing that, which is great

But it's been really wonderful to collaborate in that way. The energy in the room is so exciting

So many Broadway debuts. And to watch Chip Zion work is just the gift of a lifetime

He is such a fine actor. He's so funny. He's so heartbreaking

Honestly, he should play Fannie Bright. He was really good. He could. If anybody could, Chib's Iron, could

But no, it's been a real gift to watch, just the high level of work here. And there's so much fun in the story

but then there's so much depth in the story. So you can explore all of that. It's a real gift as an actor

I thrilled to return to Broadway and to not only return to Broadway but to play another iconic woman You know Josephine Baker is the muse I feel like she my muse She a pioneer of all black entertainers black women entertainers black queer women entertainers as well

And she, yeah, she's the first. And so I'm actually extremely humble to play her

Honestly, the biggest pinch me moment was we were doing the downtown production

and Barry was in rehearsal, and something wasn't working in the music, and the staging, and he said, hold on, hold on, whenever he sat down at the piano and just

tinkered around, fiddle with it and figured it out, and then said, okay, come over, come over

And he taught it to everybody right there in the moment, and just to see his brain work that way

mind-blowing. And to be in the room with Barry Manilow, right? He's composing

I mean, there's, yeah, who'd have thought? You're working with Barry Manelow, Bruce Sussman, Warren Carlyle

What's been the biggest pinch-me moment for each of you with working on the show, who wants to

go first. Okay. For me, it was the cast recording. To be in the room, and you really get to see

Barry at his best in the recording studio, was just a treat. And it was, I walked in and almost

you know, gasp, because it was just a very much, like, I kept kind of saying, oh my gosh, this is

really happening. Yeah. For me, it's one of the initial workshops that we all did together to see

Barry, Bruce, and Warren collaborate the way that they do behind a piano and just come up with

something brilliant. And if that idea doesn't work, they come up with something even more They're just incredible at what they do, and what an honor it is to watch them work

We had the incredible privilege of performing at Carnegie Hall and Radio City, which the real comedian harmonist did

And to stand on that stage as our characters as are who we are as people and just look out and see what they saw that was by far the most surreal moment I had Yeah After Barry wrote Copacabana he called Bruce and said what do you think And Bruce said it good it great and I think

you're going to be singing it for the rest of your career. After I recorded every single day

Barry said to Bruce, I think he's going to be singing it every single day for the rest of his life

or for the rest of his career. Off Broadway, there was a point early in the process that

they had us all go to a separate room and then Barry came in

went into the main rehearsal room and they called us in kind of one by one

to sing like different solo songs for Barry just in an isolated environment

for him to like get his head around it and stuff and that moment when I like stepped in that room

was like one of the scariest moments but then as I got into it

you know I mean just the clearing of the mind and understanding where I'm at who I'm singing to

the fact that I get to sing such wonderful material for the man who wrote it

Like, that's crazy. That was a pinch me moment, yeah. I'd say Carnegie Hall as well

I mean, stepping out onto that stage for the first time, actually, best pinch me moment. We were singing in rehearsal beforehand, and for the first time they all heard us

everyone who was performing at that concert. And Norm Lewis just goes, what

Because he was so excited about how we sounded. And that was like, ah, we did it

in the night in the night