56 | NOVEMBER 16 • 2023 
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ARTS&LIFE
THEATER

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rowing up, Danny Kornfeld and his family traveled 
to New York City many times to catch performances 
of Broadway musicals. His mother commented that 
maybe, someday, he could move there as he was 
never a great sleeper.
“I was really bad at going to bed, and my mom 
thought what better a place for me to live in than 
the city that never sleeps because you’ll never 
have to go to bed,” reminisced the 20-some-
thing from West Bloomfield who is making his 
Broadway debut in Harmony, a new musical with 
an original score written by Tony, Grammy and 
Emmy Award-winner Barry Manilow with lyrics 
and book by Drama Desk Award winner Bruce 
Sussman. 
Harmony officially opened on Broadway Nov. 
13 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. It is based 
on the true story of a troupe of the Comedian 
Harmonists, a popular German sextet entertainment group 
with three Jewish members who toured all of Europe in the 
1920s and 1930 but faded into obscurity to the backdrop of 

WWII and the Holocaust. The group sold millions of records 
and starred in a dozen films. But the Nazis put their success to 
an abrupt end and destroyed any recordings of their music and 
films. By 1935, they were never heard from again. 
What happened? The musical retells their story. 
Kornfeld said his interest in theater blos-
somed from age 4, where he first performed in 
a preschool production of Are You My Mother? at 
Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield and 
then went on to spending summers at Tamarack 
Camp and Interlochen Performing Arts Camp. 
With no immediate family in town, Kornfeld 
said his family had been active members of 
Temple Shir Shalom, where the Jewish commu-
nity there serves as a second family far from his 
East Coast roots. Along the road to Broadway, he 
has performed in community theater productions 
in Metro Detroit and is a graduate of Syracuse 
University where he completed his theater training. Now, he is 
in Harmony’s principal cast, playing the part of a young rabbi 
who escapes the pograms of Lodz, Poland, and makes his way 

West Bloomfield native 
made his Broadway debut 
in Harmony.

 Telling 
A Lost Story 
 About Jews
STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Danny Kornfeld

Sierra Boggess 
and Danny 
Kornfeld in 
Harmony

JULIETA CERVANTES

