Theater: “Harmony,” musical by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman

Over the course of a 7-decade career, Barry Manilow has released 51 Top 40 singles on the Adult Contemporary Chart, as well as 13 platinum and 6 multi-platinum albums. He has also written jingles for McDonald’s and Band-Aid, and produced albums for Bette Midler, Sarah Vaughn, and others. Despite these achievements, he remains nothing more than a punchline to his critics, a pop performer from the 1970s who writes what he has himself called “wimpy little ballads.”

So it may come as a pleasant surprise to discover that Manilow is also a serious musical theater composer, and that a revival of “Harmony,” which he co-wrote with Bruce Sussman in 1997, is moving, funny and a damned fine night out.

“Harmony” tells the story of an all-male sextet in Weimar Germany whose shtick was not unlike a barbershop quartet’s. Known as the Comedian Harmonists, they became famous for their ability to sing in harmony while delivering satiric left-leaning humor. The CH went on to make dozens of films and recordings in Germany and began touring internationally. At the height of their popularity in the early 1930s, they performed at Carnegie Hall and began hobnobbing with Josephine Baker and other bigwigs in the entertainment industry.

All this changed with the rise of Hitler, who subsequently termed their music “degenerate.” Nor was he a fan of the CH themselves, three of whom were Jewish. (A fourth married a Jewish woman.) The central conflict of “Harmony” is the group’s controversial decision to pass on remaining in America and return to Germany. Once they did, the Nazis slowly but surely chipped away at their reputation, eventually banning their performances and destroying all their recordings and films.

Chip Zien (“Caroline or Change”), who plays  Rabbi, one of the surviving singers, is the unofficial MC of “Harmony,” and he tells the tale of the group in flashbacks to their career high points (Carnegie Hall) and their low points (finding themselves on a train with Hitler). For those who expect a jukebox score of “wimpy little ballads,” fear not. The music and production numbers are sophisticated, energetic and not unlike Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret.” As for the cast, if you wanted to find six singers and actors who were on par with the original CHs, you couldn’t find better than the six we saw last night.

Manilow claims he has never been prouder of anything he’s written in his career as “Harmony.” Noted, and to this cynic, agreed and with much

belated respect. If this sweet little musical, now in previews at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, sounds like your cup of tea, go for it. As Manilow sang in one of his most celebrated jingles, you deserve a break today.