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Review: ‘The Band’s Visit’ Is a Ravishing Musical That Whispers With Romance

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By Ben Brantley

Nov. 9, 2017

Breaking news for Broadway theatergoers, even — or perhaps especially — those who thought they were past the age of infatuation: It is time to fall in love again.

One of the most ravishing musicals you will ever be seduced by opened on Thursday night at the Barrymore Theater. It is called “The Band’s Visit,” and its undeniable allure is not of the hard-charging, brightly blaring sort common to box-office extravaganzas.

Instead, this portrait of a single night in a tiny Israeli desert town confirms a lyric that arrives, like nearly everything in this remarkable show, on a breath of reluctantly romantic hope: “Nothing is as beautiful as something you don’t expect.”

With songs by David Yazbek and a script by Itamar Moses, “The Band’s Visit” is a Broadway rarity seldom found these days outside of the canon of Stephen Sondheim: an honest-to-God musical for grown-ups. It is not a work to be punctuated with rowdy cheers and foot-stomping ovations, despite the uncanny virtuosity of Mr. Yazbek’s benchmark score.

That would stop the show, and you really don’t want that to happen. Directed by David Cromer with an inspired inventiveness that never calls attention to itself, “The Band’s Visit” flows with the grave and joyful insistence of life itself. All it asks is that you be quiet enough to hear the music in the murmurs, whispers and silences of human existence at its most mundane — and transcendent.

And, oh yes, be willing to have your heart broken, at least a little. Because “The Band’s Visit,” which stars a magnificent Katrina Lenk and Tony Shalhoub as would-be lovers in a not-quite paradise, is like life in that way, too.

There were worries that this finely detailed show, based on Eran Kolirin’s screenplay for the 2007 film of the same title, might not survive the transfer to Broadway. First staged to sold-out houses late last year at the Atlantic Theater Company, it exuded a shimmering transparency that might well have evaporated in less intimate quarters.

Yet “The Band’s Visit” — which follows the modest adventures of a touring Egyptian band stranded in an Israeli village significant only for its insignificance — more than holds its own on a larger stage. Its impeccably coordinated creative team has magnified and polished its assets to a high sheen that never feels synthetic.

This show was always close to perfect musically. (Mr. Yazbek’s quietly simmering score, which inflects Broadway balladry and character songs with a haunting Middle Eastern accent, felt as essential as oxygen.) But it felt a shade less persuasive in its connective spoken scenes.

That is, to say the least, no longer a problem. Though the lives it depicts are governed by a caution born of chronic disappointment, Mr. Cromer’s production now moves wire to wire with a thoroughbred’s confidence.

Such assurance is all the more impressive when you consider that “The Band’s Visit” is built on delicately balanced contradictions. It finds ecstasy in ennui; eroticism among people who rarely make physical contact; and a sense of profound eventfulness in a plot in which, all told, very little happens.

The story is sprung when the members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Band, led by their straight-backed conductor, Tewfiq (Mr. Shalhoub), board a bus in 1996 for an engagement at the Arab Cultural Center in the city of Petah Tikva. Thanks to some understandable confusion at the ticket counter, they wind up instead in the flyblown backwater of Bet Hatikva.

They register as unmistakably alien figures there, looking like refugees from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in their powder-blue uniforms. (Sarah Laux did the costumes.) And there’s not a bus out of this godforsaken hole until the next morning.

Just how uninteresting is Bet Hatikva? Its residents are happy to tell you, in some of the wittiest songs ever written about being bored. The “B” that begins its name might as well stand for “basically bleak and beige and blah blah blah.”

Leading this civic inventory is a cafe proprietor named Dina (Ms. Lenk, in a star-making performance), a wry beauty who clearly doesn’t belong here and just as clearly will never leave. Like her fellow citizens, she sees the defining condition of her life as eternal waiting, a state in which you “keep looking off out into the distance/ Even though you know the view is never gonna change.”

Scott Pask’s revolving set, so fitting for a world in which life seems to spin in an endless circle, captures the sameness of the view. But Tyler Micoleau’s lighting, and the whispers of projections by Maya Ciarrocchi, evoke the subliminal changes of perspective stirred by the arrival of strangers.

Connections among the Egyptian and the Israeli characters are inevitably incomplete. To begin with, they don’t share a language and must communicate in broken English. And as the stranded musicians interact with their hosts, their shared story becomes a tally of sweet nothings, of regretful might-have-beens.

That means that the cultural collisions and consummations that you — and they — might anticipate don’t occur. Even the frictions that emerge from uninvited Arabs on Israeli soil flicker and die like damp matches.

The show is carefully veined with images of incompleteness: a forever unlit cigarette in the mouth of a violinist (George Abud); a clarinet concerto that has never been completed by its composer (Alok Tewari); a public telephone that never rings, guarded by a local (Adam Kantor) waiting for a call from his girlfriend; and a pickup line that’s dangled like an unbaited hook by the band’s aspiring Lothario (Ari’el Stachel, whose smooth jazz vocals dazzle in the style of his character’s idol, Chet Baker).

All the cast members — who also include a deeply affecting John Cariani, Kristen Sieh, Etai Benson and Andrew Polk — forge precisely individualized characters, lonely people who have all known loss, with everything and nothing in common. A marvelous Mr. Shalhoub (“Monk”) has only grown in the role of a man who carries his dignity and private grief with the stiffness of someone transporting perilously fragile cargo.

As for Ms. Lenk, seen on Broadway last season in Paula Vogel’s “Indecent,” she is the ideal avatar of this show’s paradoxical spirit, at once coolly evasive and warmly expansive, like the jasmine wind that Dina describes in the breakout ballad “Omar Sharif.”

Listening to Tewfiq sing in Arabic, she wonders, “Is he singing about wishing?” She goes on: “I don’t know what I feel, and I don’t know what I know/All I know is I feel something different.”

Mr. Yazbek’s melody matches the exquisitely uncertain certainty of the lyrics. That “something different” is the heart-clutching sensation that throbs throughout this miraculous show, as precise as it is elusive, and all the more poignant for being both.

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The Band's Visit

A band comprised of members of the Egyptian police force head to Israel to play at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab arts center, only to find themselves lost in the wrong town.
On an ordinary day, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrives in Israel from Egypt for a cultural event, only find there is no delegation to meet them, nor any arrangements to get to their destination of Petah Tiqva. When they find their own ride, they arrive instead at the remote town of Beit Hatikva. Stuck there until the next morning's bus, the band, led by the repressed Tawfiq Zacharaya, gets help from the worldly lunch owner, Dina, who offers to put them up for the night. As the band settles in as best it can, each of the members attempts to get along with the natives in their own way. What follows is a special night of quiet happenings and confessions as the band makes its own impact on the town and the town on them. — Kenneth Chisholm ([email protected])
This warm, heartfelt film follows the members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, led by the repressed Tawfiq, who after taking the wrong bus on their way to a cultural event, wind up on the doorstep of Dina (Elkabetz), a free-spirited cafe owner in a remote Israel village. After informing them they will be stuck there until the next morning, Dina offers to put them up for the night, with help from other villagers.

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The eight men wear sky-blue uniforms with gold braid on the shoulders. They look like extras in an opera. They dismount from a bus in the middle of nowhere and stand uncertainly on the sidewalk. They are near a highway interchange, leading no doubt to where they’d rather be. Across the street is a small cafe. Regarding them are two bored layabouts and a sadly, darkly beautiful woman.

They are a band from Egypt, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra. Their leader, a severe man with a perpetually dour expression, crosses the street and asks the woman for directions to the Arab Cultural Center. She looks at him as if he stepped off a flying saucer. “Here there is no Arab culture,” she says. “Also, no Israeli culture. Here there is no culture at all.”

They are in the middle of the Israeli desert, having taken the wrong bus to the wrong destination. Another bus will not come until tomorrow. “ The Band ’s Visit” begins with this premise, which could supply the makings of a comedy, and turns into a quiet, sympathetic film about the loneliness that surrounds us. Oh, and there is some comedy, after all.

The town they have arrived at is lacking in interest even for those who live there. It is seemingly without activity. The bandleader, named Tewfiq ( Sasson Gabai ), asks if there is a hotel. The woman, Dina ( Ronit Elkabetz ), is amused. No hotel.

They communicate in careful, correct English; she more fluent, he weighing every word. Tewfiq explains their dilemma.

They are to play a concert tomorrow at the opening of a new Arab cultural center in a place has that almost, but not quite, the same name as the place they are in.

Tewfiq starts out to lead a march down the highway in the correct direction. There is some dissent, especially from the tall young troublemaker Haled ( Saleh Bakri ). He complains that they have not eaten. After some awkward negotiations (they have little Israeli currency), the Egyptians are served soup and bread in Dina’s cafe. It is strange, how the static, barren, lifeless nature of the town seeps into the picture, even though the writer-director Eran Kolirin uses no establishing shots or any effort at all to show us anything beyond the cafe — and later, Dina’s apartment and an almost empty restaurant.

Dina offers to put up Tewfiq and Haled at her apartment, and tells the young layabouts (who seem permanently anchored to their chairs outside her cafe) that they must take the others home to their families. And then begins a long, quiet night of guarded revelations, shared isolation and tentative tenderness. Dina is tough but not invulnerable. Life has given her little that she hoped for. Tewfiq is a man with an invisible psychic weight on his shoulders. Haled, under everything, is an awkward kid. They go for a snack at the restaurant, its barren tables reaching away under bright lights, and Dina points out a man who comes in with his family. A sometime lover of hers, she tells Tewfiq. Even adultery seems weary here.

When the three end up back at Dina’s apartment, where she offers them wine, the evening settles down into resignation. It is clear that Dina feels tender toward Tewfiq, that she can see through his timid reserve to the good soul inside. But there is no movement. Later, when he makes a personal revelation, it is essentially an apology. The movie avoids what we might expect, a meeting of the minds, and gives us instead a sharing of quiet desperation.

As Dina and Twefiq, Ronit Elkabetz and Sasson Gabai bring great fondness and amusement to their characters. She is pushing middle age, he is being pushed by it. It is impossible for this night to lead to anything in their future lives. But it could lead to a night to remember.

Gabai plays the bandleader as so repressed or shy or wounded that he seems closed inside himself. As we watch Elkabetz putting on a new dress for the evening and inspecting herself in the mirror, we see not vanity but hope. Throughout the evening, we note her assertion, her confidence, her easily assumed air of independence. Yet when she gazes into the man’s eyes, she sighs with regret and mentions that as a girl she loved the Omar Sharif movies that played daily on Israeli TV, but play no more.

There are some amusing interludes. A band member plays the first few notes of a sonata he has not finished (after years). A bandmate calls him Schubert. A local man keeps solitary vigil by a pay phone, waiting for a call from the girl he loves. He has an insistent way of showing his impatience when another uses the phone.

In the morning, the band reassembles and leaves. “The Band’s Visit” has not provided any of the narrative payoffs we might have expected, but has provided something more valuable: An interlude involving two “enemies,” Arabs and Israelis, that shows them both as only ordinary people with ordinary hopes, lives and disappointments. It has also shown us two souls with rare beauty.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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The Band's Visit (2008)

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language

Sasson Gabai as Tewfiq

Ronit Elkabetz as Dina

Saleh Bakri as Haled

Khalifa Natour as Simon

Mad Jabarin as Camal

Written and directed by

Eran Kolirin

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The Band’s Visit tells the story of an Egyptian police band who finds themselves stranded in a remote village in Israel for a night due to a mix-up with their transportation. As the band members and the townspeople interact, language barriers and cultural differences dissolve through the universal language of music. This chance encounter leads to beautiful moments of understanding, friendship, and self-discovery. The Band’s Visit is a reminder that the shared love of music can bridge gaps and create meaningful connections.

Musical Information

Musical Type: Contemporary (2016)

Cast Size: 18

Genre: Drama

Setting: 1990s / Israel

Creative Team

Music/Lyrics: David Yazbek

Book: Itamar Moses

Cast Albums

Original Broadway Cast (2017)➝

Licensing: Music Theatre International➝

Sheet Music: Amazon➝

2010s , Bands , Based on a Movie , Dramatic , One-Act , Tony Award , Travel

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The Band's Visit Story

Spend an evening in the company of unforgettable strangers at The Band’s Visit —now one of the most celebrated musicals ever. It rejoices in the way music brings us to life, brings us to laughter, brings us to tears, and ultimately, brings us together. In an Israeli desert town where every day feels the same, something different is suddenly in the air. Dina, the local café owner, had long resigned her desires for romance to daydreaming about exotic films and music from her youth. When a band of Egyptian musicians shows up lost at her café, she and her fellow locals take them in for the night. Under the spell of the night sky, their lives intertwine in unexpected ways, and this once sleepy town begins to wake up.

Broadway Shows
The Band's Visit on Broadway

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The Band's Visit

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Rent The Band's Visit on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

The Band's Visit is both a clever, subtle slice-of-life comedy, and poignant cross-cultural exploration.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Eran Kolirin

Sasson Gabay

Ronit Elkabetz

Saleh Bakri

Khalifa Natour

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Review: ‘The Band’s Visit’ brings its musical poetry to Dolby Theatre

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A musical doesn’t have to make a lot of noise to dazzle. “The Band’s Visit,” the exquisitely delicate Tony-winning show now receiving its Los Angeles premiere at Dolby Theatre, treads lightly across the stage in a hush of magic.

Based on Israeli writer-director Eran Kolirin’s screenplay for his 2007 film of the same title, “The Band’s Visit” follows a group of Egyptian musicians who are stranded overnight in a sleepy desert town in Israel. Strangers in a suspicious land, they don’t expect to be welcomed. But instead of enmity, they find hospitality — their differences bridged first by courtesy, and later, as they get to know each other better, a somber-hued humanity.

Composer and lyricist David Yazbek infuses Itamar Moses ’ book with lyrical poetry. Discreetly flecked rather than dolloped, music provides a vehicle of shared expression for grief, longing and hope — a universal language that recognizes no borders.

The state-of-the-art Dolby, where the production runs through Dec. 19, is an ideal venue for a show that relies on quiet clarity. The theatergoing experience is refreshingly unharried. Spacious enough to comfortably accommodate a crowd, the Dolby manages through the crispness of its sound system and the sharpness of its lighting to feel intimate even at a distance.

And intimacy is essential for “The Band’s Visit,” a musical that moves lightly yet deeply into Chekhovian territory. The tone is playful, almost casual. But some essential truth about life is captured in the insouciant flow.

The scene is drolly set in a few sentences projected onto the stage at the start of the show: “Once not long ago a group of musicians came to Israel from Egypt. You probably didn’t hear about it. It wasn’t very important.”

Insignificance, however, marks the majority of our days. And what doesn’t make headlines turns out to matter a great deal.

The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, which was invited to perform at an Arab cultural center in Petah Tikva, is blown off course by a pronunciation error. The band winds up in Bet Hatikva, a fictional backwater that its own residents dismiss as “boring,” “barren” and “bland” in the wry number “Welcome to Nowhere.”

Dina (Janet Dacal), the owner of a café, greets this troupe of men with brusque bemusement. Tewfiq (Sasson Gabay, reprising the role he played in the film), the commander of the orchestra, asks with impeccable manners whether he and his musicians may dine at her establishment. With a businesswoman’s shrug, she consents.

Formality is out of place in Bet Hatikva. “Pick a sandhill of your choosing,” jokes Papi (Coby Getzug), one of the friendlier locals. But Dina is drawn to Tewfiq’s gravity and thinks he looks cute in his powder-blue Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band suit. She offers to find sleeping accommodations for the musicians after breaking the news that there are no more buses today.

The town is reluctant to open its doors, but Dina proves to be as formidable a commander as Tewfiq. She divides the men up, taking Tewfiq and Haled (Joe Joseph), a young romantic trumpet player obsessed with Chet Baker, to her place.

Haled has reason to be nervous. It was his innocent miscommunication that landed the band on the wrong bus. Tewfiq has made his impatience with dreamy-headed Haled loudly known. Haled, however, is like a puppy unable to stop chasing after fun even after getting whacked with a newspaper.

As in a Chekhov play, a busy plot isn’t needed for revelations to emerge. “The Band’s Visit” relies on the alchemy of unexpected encounters. Dina and Tewfiq, ships in the night that aren’t supposed to be in the same waters, discover a shared love of old Egyptian movies, which Dina sings about in a lovely ode appropriately called “Omar Sharif.”

The characters catch glimpses of one another’s souls. Music leads the way by lifting the banal exchanges into a sudden sublime. In one of the most moving instances of this elevation, Simon (James Rana), a clarinetist and aspiring conductor who’s staying with a husband and wife (played by Clay Singer and Kendal Hartse) in the throes of marital problems, soothes their crying baby with some strains from his instrument.

Peace breaks out in this tempestuous household, and suddenly all of the built-up resentments don’t seem all that important. Simon hasn’t been able to finish the concerto he started writing long ago, but his art has done its job of easing the daily suffering.

The unspoken hangs between Dacal’s Dina and Gabay’s Tewfiq as they share a drink in the evening air. An affectionate melancholy fills the gaps in what they have time to say.

Joseph’s Haled radiates a sensual enjoyment, made all the most precious by his awareness that his days of youthful freedom are drawing to a close. The eclectic blend of musical styles — traditional Arab, klezmer and jazz, among them — enhances the cast’s subtle emotional chemistry.

David Cromer’s fluidly directed production glides from the café to domestic settings to a roller disco, all the while keeping tabs on a phone booth, where a forlorn-looking guy (Joshua Grosso) waits eternally for a call from his girlfriend that never seems to come.

The scenic design by Scott Pask has the same jaunty quality as the show itself. The settings are sketched with a simplicity that is more like a diagram than a photograph. Yet the moonlit atmosphere lends this elsewhere a haunting individuality.

At a time when everyone seems to be so angry, conflicts appear to be irresolvable and communion no longer within reach, “The Band’s Visit” is like balm for a tired spirit. The musical touched me deeply when I saw it on Broadway in 2017, but after such a long period away from the theater, I found the show even more profoundly affecting.

Operating on a subtler-than-usual Broadway frequency, Yazbek and Moses’ musical drama invites us to transcend our rifts. I didn’t realize how badly I needed “The Band’s Visit,” but this gift of a show has arrived in just the nick of time.

'The Band's Visit'

Where: Dolby Theatre, 6801 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Dec. 19 Tickets: Start at $30 (subject to change) Contact: 1-800-982-2787 or BroadwayInHollywood.com or Ticketmaster.com Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Also Segerstrom Center for the Arts March 22-April 3 at scfta.org

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Theater Review: “The Band’s Visit” — Revelations of Commonality

By David Greenham

This well-directed and -performed production of a musical about the universal longing for connection delivers a stirringly heartfelt experience.

The Band’s Visit . Music and lyrics by David Yazbek. Book by Itamar Moses. Directed by Paul Daigneault. Choreography by Daniel Pelzig. Music direction by José Delgado. Scenic design by Wilson Chin and Jimmy Stubbs. Costume design by Miranda Kau Giurleo. Lighting design by Aja M. Jackson. Sound design by Joshua Millican. A co-production of The Huntington Theatre Company and SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Huntington, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston, through December 17.

Jennifer Apple and Brian Thomas Abraham in the Huntington Theatre Company/SpeakEasy Stage co-production of The Band’s Visit. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

In these American days of divisiveness, name calling, and the general condemnation of people who “aren’t like us,” what a shock it would be to discover that we all have more in common than all the harmful rhetoric might suggest.

In 2018 — which now seems like decades ago — The Band’s Visit , a 90-minute one-act musical, improbably took Broadway by storm. All the more shocking: the show, based on a 2007 Israeli independent film, contained few of the glamorous trappings of a traditional Broadway musical. Missing are big production numbers, swelling with sharp and angular choreography, a cartoonish plot, propelled by formulaic smiles and hummable tunes, and a boffo inspirational ending.

Instead, this surprisingly mature musical details a subtle, moving, and thought-provoking story of loss, one filled with loneliness, ironic mistakes, and missed opportunities. There are challenges for American audiences: the Middle Eastern musical style will be unfamiliar to many and the dialogue contains Arabic, Hebrew, and stunted English with a strong accent. None of that cultural amalgamation lessens the impact of this generously spirited show.

The tale is set in 1996. The Egyptian Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra is booked to travel to Israel to perform at an important concert in the arts-rich Israeli city of Petah Tikva. A linguistic misunderstanding at the airport sends them off course. They end up way down in the country’s south, deep in the Negev desert in the tiny fictional town of Bet Hatikva. Locals Dina (Jennifer Apple), Itzik (Jared Troilo), and Papi (Jesse Garlick) promise the band members that their visit to their village will be terrible. They sing: “This is Bet Hatikva with a B — like in boring, like in barren, like in bullshit, like in bland, like in basically bleak and beige and blah, blah, blah.”

The Band’s stoic leader and conductor, Tewfiq (Brian Thomas Abraham), tries to find a way to correct the mistake, but there’s no bus out of town until the next day. Although they are reluctant to admit it, the strangers have no option but to spend the night. Thankfully, Dina takes charge and arranges makeshift lodging for the unexpected guests.

Dina brings Tewfiq and trumpeter Haled (Kareem Elsamadicy) to her apartment. She makes Itzik invite clarinetist Simon (James Rana) and violinist Camal (Andrew Mayer) to stay with his wife Iris (Marianna Bassham) and their baby, along with Iris’s visiting father Avrum (Robert Saoud).

The arrangement generates three small stories that take place over the course of the evening. Dina and Tewfiq visit a local cafeteria for dinner; Itzik, his family, and guests have a sometimes-challenging dinner at home; and Haled meets up with Papi to tag along on a double date at a roller-skating rink with Zelger (Fady Demian), his girlfriend Anna (Emily Qualmann), and painfully shy Julia (Josephine Moshiri Elwood).

As the trio of narratives progress in unplanned ways, we also watch the patient struggles of the Telephone Guy (Noah Kieserman), who is waiting for his girlfriend to call. He’s been standing by the local pay phone for a month: no one else believes she’ll call, but he is confident that the phone will ring.

Marianna Bassham, Andew Mayer, Robert Saoud, James Rana, Jared Troilo in the Huntington Theatre Company/SpeakEasy Stage co-production of The Band’s Visit. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

Each of the stories confidently explores the emotional depths of the leading characters: Dina and Tewfiq share the loss of the idealistic plans they imagined about love; Itzik and Iris’s marriage is failing; Avrum recalls with great joy the first time he saw his late wife; Simon seems to discover the inspiration that’s needed for him to finish a concerto he’s writing; and Papi’s fear of how to win over Julia begins to disappear thanks to Haled’s support and advice.

Other nonspeaking members of the band variously come in and out, accompanying the revelations with songs that dramatically enhance the primary scenes.

The problem of changing the locations of four stories, told simultaneously, has been cleverly solved by Wilson Chin and Jimmy Stubbs’s deceptively complex set. The staging’s set pieces seamlessly move in and out: the transitions are simple and crisp. (The choreography shares that virtue as well.) A wonderful set change occurs as late as the curtain call: a wall that’s designed to look like a parked bus is raised to reveal the rest of the members of the orchestra. It also serves as a sort of makeshift party platform for the final musical numbers. Also fun is the peripatetic public phone cubicle that the Telephone Guy rolls around the stage during most of the production as he patiently waits and waits.

Miranda Kau Giurleo’s costumes seem inspired by the original designs, especially Dina’s ensembles and the powder blue military-looking band outfits. Given that so many singers and musicians are milling about the stage, Joshua Millican’s sound design needs to be spot on. It is.

Only Aja M. Jackson’s lighting seems to intrude on underlining the material’s nuances. Pin spots frequently frame the soloists as the rest of the stage lighting dims. For me, the impact — with star turn framing — often served to separate the song from the dramatic context. The sumptuous songs and music can hold their own — no need to add a nudge of “the limelight.”

Kareem Elsamadicy, Jesse Garlick, and Josephine Moshiri Elwood in the Huntington Theatre Company/SpeakEasy Stage co-production of The Band’s Visit. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

Despite the separateness of the stories and the ever-changing settings, the ensemble comes off as a beautifully coordinated team long before the glorious “Answer Me” number, which features the Telephone Guy’s (Kieserman) wonderful voice calling the entire company into a splendid unity.

But it’s not the message of universal yearning that really drives The Band’s Visit : it is the compelling depth of its characters. Front and center is the unusual and absorbing interaction between Apple’s Dina and Abraham’s Tewfiq. The highlight of the production is Dina’s wonderful “Omar Sharif,” where she sings of her love for the music of famous Arab singer Umm Kulthum and the movies of her childhood, particularly the 1960 Egyptian film The River of Love , which starred Egyptian actor Omar Sharif. Dina and Tewfiq charmingly share their passion for this cinematic romance.

Needless to say, The Band’s Visit isn’t one of those “wrap everything up in a tidy bow” entertainments. Much like the history of the land where the story is set, this musical is untidy. No easy answers are provided. But, in this well-directed and -performed production, the show’s powerful look at the longing for connection makes for a stirringly heartfelt experience.

David Greenham is an adjunct lecturer of Drama at the University of Maine at Augusta, and is the former executive director of the Maine Arts Commission. He has been a theater artist and arts administrator in Maine for more than 30 years.

This sounds like a thoughtful, subtle show. I remember critics praising it on Broadway. I hope to see a production somewhere (I don’t live near Boston) and might try to watch the original movie. Thanks for such a detailed and nuanced review.

The Band's Visit

Writers: Itamar Moses David Yazbek

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Music Interviews

The cast of 'the band's visit' on what makes the broadway smash relatable.

Ari Shapiro

The Band's Visit star Katrina Lenk performs at NPR's Tiny Desk on May 15, 2018. Eslah Attar/NPR hide caption

The Band's Visit star Katrina Lenk performs at NPR's Tiny Desk on May 15, 2018.

The Band's Visit is a Broadway musical that tells the story of human connection and commonality between cultures. When an Egyptian police band gets stranded in a tiny Israeli town, the musicians wait in a cafe — and get to talking with the locals.

The plot is simple and the set modest, but since its debut on Broadway in late 2017, the show has become the surprise smash hit of the season. Now, the musical is nominated for 11 Tony Awards, including best musical, ahead of Sunday's award ceremony.

Tony Shalhoub and Katrina Lenk play the show's leads, bandleader Tewfiq and cafe owner Dina; both are nominated in acting categories. When the cast stopped by NPR's Tiny Desk this spring to perform selections from The Band's Visit , Shalhoub and Lenk sat down afterwards to chat with All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro.

Watch: 'The Band's Visit' Tiny Desk Concert

"It's kind of a respite for all of the noise and strife out there. It's kind of the perfect antidote, really, nowadays, for all the madness," Shalhoub says of the show's plot, noting that the story focuses on people more than politics. "It's about people taking risks, reaching out toward each other, trying to communicate and coming together over the common love of music."

This show lacks the bells and whistles of typical Broadway hit. Lenk says its intimacy is what makes the show stand out. "I think the characters that are in the show are immediately relatable. Yes, they're not in America, but there's 'that guy' and everyone knows 'that guy.' ... They've been that person at some point in their lives," she says. "I think everyone can relate to the characters and also bring their own experiences to the show and take back what it means to them personally."

Hear more of the conversation at the audio link — and watch the full performance in NPR's Tiny Desk series.

Audio engineer Josh Rogosin contributed to this story.

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the band's visit

In moving musical 'The Band's Visit,' strangers from distinct Mideast cultures find harmony

Magnificent writers theatre production of the tony-winning show pulls you in to the characters’ world and you don’t want to leave..

Café owner Dina (Sophie Madorsky, with Rom Barkhordar and Armand Akbari) is among the people in a remote Israeli town showing hospitality to stranded Egyptian musicians in “The Band’s Visit.”

Michael Brosilow

Quirky, character-driven, self-declared at the start as being not “very important,” the 2018 Tony-winning best musical “The Band’s Visit” has always been a modest, heartwarming show, a pixelated slice-of-life about the ways humans feel connected with each other. It’s mostly about love, but also about how music and movies help bring people together.

I enjoyed the piece immensely on Broadway, where it was directed by David Cromer, a longtime Chicago artist now on the A-plus-list in New York. He won the directing Tony for his work on this show.

But I was far more deeply moved by this intimate, intensely engaging production at Writers Theater, directed by Zi Alikhan. Alikhan worked under Cromer on the national tour of the “The Band’s Visit,” and has an impressive, mostly regional-theater resume. He’s making an extremely memorable mark in his Chicago debut.

This offbeat musical from composer David Yazbeck (“The Full Monty,” “Tootsie”) and writer Itamar Moses, based on a 2007 Israeli film, tells the story of a small Egyptian orchestra invited to perform at the Arab cultural center in the real-life Israeli city of Petah Tikvah. Instead, the musicians accidentally, and understandably, find themselves in Bet Hatikvah, a fictional, remote desert town. Stranded awaiting the rare bus, and in a town too tiny for a hotel, they must rely on the hospitality of locals who aren’t used to visitors, let alone those from another culture. Two of the songs, to give you a sense, are called “Welcome to Nowhere” and “Something Different.”

This production has the cast playing nearly all the instruments — including Middle Eastern ones like the pear-shaped, lute-like oud — with a few supplements from offstage. A benefit is that the musical interstices serve as an indication of how the townspeople manage to pass the time, given that there is so little going on in Bet Hatikvah.

From 2019: ‘The Band’s Visit’ a marvelous, exquisitely crafted arrival indeed

Yazbek’s lovely, nuanced score, highly unusual for a Broadway show, feels deeply connected to the region, which is essential for bringing an authenticity to the setting and story, which itself is minimal but involving.

During a single evening, the strangers get to know each other. Café owner Dina (Sophie Madorsky) and the orchestra’s leader Tewfiq (Rom Barkhordar) bond over memories of Omar Sharif movies and the music of Egyptian Umm Kulthum, which Dina grew up with. Simon (Jonathan Shaboo), the orchestra’s clarinetist, finds himself observing the quarrels of a married couple (Dave Honigman and Dana Saleh Omar). The Chet Baker-loving Haled (Armand Akbari, exuding friendly charm) tags along as an extra wheel on a roller-skating date with locals (Sam Linda, Marielle Issa, Becky Keeshin, Jordan Golding).

This ensemble is extraordinary: un-showy, uniformly honest, remarkably likable.

I understand Madorsky’s Dina more than I did that of Katrina Lenk, who played the role on Broadway and just couldn’t cover up her sense of glamor, that Dina was truly stuck in this small town, so clearly out of place. While equally as compelling, this Dina may long for something more, but also very much belongs here, and she comes across as far more vulnerable.

Sam Linda and Becky Keeshin play locals in Bet Hatikvah on a roller-skating date.

Another standout is Sam Linda, a performer I’ve seen before without his making this type of impression. He seems born for this part, and his “Papi Hears the Ocean,” about what he hears when he tries to talk with girls, is wildly enjoyable, all the funnier for its fundamental believability and the careful timing of Sebastiani Romagnolo’s choreography.

I was concerned, given the current, horrifying events occurring on the Israeli-Egypt border, that this show would feel too slight for the moment, a “can’t we all get along?” message at a moment when reality suggests the answer to that is a resounding “No.”

From 2019: David Cromer sees ‘everyday heroes’ as the heart and soul of ‘The Band’s Visit’

But from the moment this story starts, this magnificent production pulls you in to the characters’ world and you don’t want to leave. It’s an innocent, peaceful place. The actors all speak with accents — believable to my ear, for sure — as the Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking characters use sometimes-halting English to communicate. It’s about what people have in common. Politics doesn’t exist. The characters expose their inner selves to strangers; although at first surprised to be dealing with the situation, they’re ultimately emotionally unguarded.

But the show also gains deep, complex, upsetting layers from the fact that, when you awaken from the reverie of its sweetness, you realize these people — that is to say, people just like them — may be dead or hostages or at least in mourning for loved ones, and times past.

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Masters of shrug and eye roll … the orchestra in The Band’s Visit.

The Band’s Visit review – entrancing musical about nothing and nowhere

Donmar Warehouse, London When an Egyptian orchestra accidentally tips up in a sleepy Israeli backwater, lives are changed in the quietest of ways

‘N othing is as beautiful as something you didn’t expect.” That’s the story of this 2016 musical, and also its entrancing effect. Based on a 2007 Israeli film about an unplanned encounter between Egyptian musicians and the people of an Israeli backwater, the musical is a charmer about lives changed in the quietest of ways.

We first see a luggage carousel, and a clutch of men in incongruous powder blue uniforms. This is the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, booked for a prestigious gig in the city of Petah Tikvah. A mid-flirt mistake at the ticket office lands them in Bet Hatikva, a nowhere town in the Negev desert, “basically bleak and beige and blah blah blah”. It’s a place where nothing happens, every day.

The bus to the city doesn’t leave until tomorrow, so the musicians bed down around town. And that’s it, that’s the plot. We follow characters through a long warm evening – from a fractious family apartment to the local roller disco and a poor excuse for a park. Everything here is unfinished business: neglected ambitions, an incomplete concerto, a never-ringing payphone. Even Soutra Gilmour’s set is backed by tiers of bricks from an abandoned building project. At least the band has somewhere to sit.

And it’s music that drives the show forward, nudging the characters’ anxious minds and clouded hearts. With its klezmatic clarinet, emphatic oud and a flute like a desolate wind, it’s thrilling to hear the band’s squall and rumble. David Yazbek’s Tony-winning score begins in twitchy languor – the sigh of a place where nothing happens, the fret of wishing it would – then deepens, cradling songs of desire and disappointment.

Desire … Alon Moni Aboutboul and Miri Mesika in The Band’s Visit.

If there is a central thread in this ensemble show, it’s the near-romance between Tewfiq and Dina, the gruff conductor and the local cafe owner. Alon Moni Aboutboul’s Tewfiq hides behind his peaked cap and mournful courtesy. As the night unrolls, he demonstrates the conductor’s art in a delicate hand ballet and scrapes the rust off his voice in lilting Arabic song.

Dina is smart, disillusioned and ragingly unfulfilled – we don’t know exactly how she feels about her ex-husband, but the decisive way she carves up a watermelon gives an idea. In a stunning performance by Israeli performer Miri Mesika, each song reveals new textures in her voice, from sardonic iron to yearning velvet. The standout number has her sink into the memory of watching Omar Sharif’s romantic movies, “floating in on a jasmine wind”.

Scenes in Itamar Moses’s tangy script often end too soon – they scarper at a song’s close rather than linger with a situation. Both hosts and visitors know each other too well, but encounters with strangers mean that people must explain themselves. Every conversation prises a lid off complex emotion, probes at tender places.

Even scene changes thrum with character in Michael Longhurst’s open-hearted production. I loved spending time with his poker-faced cast, masters of shrug and eye roll. They include Michal Horowicz’s miserable wife, too worn down to sing, Marc Antolin’s drifting manboy, Sargon Yelda’s attentive composer and Ashley Margolis, waiting by the phone like a lonesome muppet.

The smallest things can lift them. A doleful waiter (Harel Glazer), easily panicked by women, gets romantic advice at the roller disco. A tearful baby is soothed by a clarinet lullaby. This unexpected night may not change lives forever – but it helps people face a new day.

At the Donmar Warehouse, London , until 3 December

Donmar Warehouse
Soutra Gilmour

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The Band’s Visit: From Movie to Musical

The Band’s Visit has the rare honor of becoming a phenomenal success twice, first as a film and later as a musical. Both times, this beloved tale transcended its modest origins to capture the hearts and minds of audiences everywhere.

Written and directed by Israeli filmmaker Eran Kolirin in his directorial film debut, The Band’s Visit movie tells the story of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra who mistakenly travel to the wrong Israeli town. Intending to go to an Arab cultural center in Petah Tikva, the sixth largest city in Israel at the time, the Orchestra ends up on a bus to the fictional town of Bet Hatikva in southern Israel’s Negev Desert. Kolirin cast several famous actors in his film, including the Baghdad-born Israeli actor Sasson Gabai, the Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz, and the Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri.

Selected for the 2007 Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard (“At a Glance”) category, which highlights films made by newer directors or ones with non-traditional stories and innovative filmmaking techniques, The Band’s Visit charmed audiences at the festival, winning a Special Jury Award ( Coup de cœur du jury ). Released in Israel later that year, the film would go on to win seven Ophir Awards from the Israeli Academy of Film and Television, including Best Film, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Screenplay and Music. Submitted by Israel for consideration in the Foreign Language Film category of the Oscars, the film was disqualified because the majority of the dialogue is spoken in English, not Hebrew or Arabic.

Although the plot is wholly original, the film’s embrace of Egyptian cinema and Middle Eastern music was influenced by experiences from Kolirin’s childhood. “ When I was a kid, my family and I used to watch Egyptian movies,” he shared in 2007. “This was a fairly common Israeli family practice, circa the early 1980’s. In the late afternoon on Fridays, we’d watch with bated breaths the convoluted plots, the impossible loves and the heart-breaking pain of Omar Sharif, Pathen Hamama, I’del Imam, and the rest of that crew on the one and only TV channel that the country had. This was kind of weird, actually, for a country that spent half of its existence in a state of war with Egypt, and the other half in a sort of cold, correct peace with its neighbor to the south. Sometimes, after the Arab movie, they’d broadcast a performance of the Israel Broadcasting Authority’s orchestra.” Established in 1948, the IBA’s Arabic Orchestra, whose members were mostly Jewish immigrants from Iraq and Egypt, made it their mission to uplift and celebrate Arabic music in Israel and beyond.

When The Band’s Visit was screened in New York at the Other Israel Film Festival, which is dedicated to the work of both Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, it caught the eye of theatre producer Orin Wolf. “I immediately hungered to put the story onstage,” he said in a 2018 interview with Dramatics . “For me, the filmmaker Eran Kolirin made what felt like a piece of theatre about people being stuck. That’s something that always interests me theatrically: people being stuck in one place. The story dealt with language barriers, people struggling to find the right words, and it was about musicians. It felt to me like it was a natural fit for the stage.” After several conversations, Wolf convinced Kolirin to grant him the stage rights to the story. At which point the producer, who had recently found success as part of the Broadway producing team for the film-to-musical Once, pondered whether to pursue the story as a play or a musical.

Legendary Broadway producer Hal Prince, who was mentoring Wolf, connected him with playwright Itamar Moses (whose Bach at Lepzig played at Writers Theatre in 2007 ) and composer David Yazbe c k ( The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Women of the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown ) in 2013. Moses, whose parents are Israeli, and Yazbek, whose mother is Jewish and father Lebanese, both connected strongly with the material and saw its potential. Moses remembered, “I felt the intimacy of the story, how much it depended on small connections between individuals, which theatre excels at. How still it was. And there was a very organic reason for there to be music in it. First, there’s this band. And second, music is one of the zones of connection between the people, a language that the characters use to communicate. I thought, ‘OK, that justifies it being a musical.’”

The team soon added its final member, director David Cromer, who hails from Skokie and has directed at WT many times over the years, most recently with Next to Normal in 2019 . Atlantic Theatre Company in New York produced the world premiere of the musical in late 2016, where it ran for two months. Reviews and response for the Off-Broadway production were strong, with the show winning several Drama Desk and Obie Awards. Could the musical successfully transfer to Broadway and find a broader audience for its quieter tale of human connection? Would it survive in a season that also included far more familiar titles, such as the original musicals Frozen , SpongeBob SquarePants , and Mean Girls as well as splashy revivals of beloved classics My Fair Lady, Carousel and Once on This Island?

The answer was a resounding yes. The musical opened to rave reviews in November 2017, with The New York Times calling it “a Broadway rarity seldom found these days outside of the canon of Stephen Sondheim: an honest-to-God musical for grown-ups.” The production would end up running for over a year and a half. At the 2018 Tony Awards, the show went home with ten awards, including Best Musical, Book, Score, Actor, Actress and Director, making it only the fourth musical to win the unofficial “Big Six” awards. The cast recording would also win a 2019 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theatre Album.

Writers Theatre and TheatreSquared’s co-production of The Band’s Visit marks the musical’s regional premiere, the first original production in America since the Broadway national tour.

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Thespian Nation

The Band’s Visit

ERAN KOLIRIN’S 2007 film, The Band’s Visit , is set in the deeply political geography of rural Israel in 1996. It tells the story of a small Israeli town where daily routines get disrupted by an unexpected visit from Egyptian musicians. Though aiming for Petah Tikvah, where they are scheduled to play a concert, the band members have found themselves — due to language miscues — in Bet Hatikva, where they stay overnight.

Efforts to communicate with the town’s residents produce opportunities for humor, drama, and problem-solving. These people from two cultures land on English and on the klezmer-influenced Mediterranean music they share to speak across barriers on matters of friendship, love, and loss.

Itamar Moses, David Yazbek, David Cromer and Orin Wolf discuss The Band’s Visit . Photo by Paul Hyde.

In December 2016, a musical theatre adaptation of The Band’s Visit premiered in Atlantic Theater Company’s Off-Broadway Linda Gross Theater. Eleven months later in November 2017, it opened at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre. It was nominated for 11 Tony Awards and won 10, including Best Musical as well as trophies for its direction, book, score, orchestrations, lighting, sound, leading actress, leading actor, and featured actor.

Just days before the musical opened on Broadway, its lead producer Orin Wolf, director David Cromer, librettist Itamar Moses, and composer David Yazbek sat down for a panel discussion hosted by the American Theatre Critics Association, moderated by Martha Wade Steketee.

Where did the process start, who was first on the project, and who did you have to cajole to get involved? ORIN WOLF: I saw the 2007 film at the Other Israel Film Festival. My wife is Israeli, so I was familiar with Israeli events going on around New York. I immediately hungered to put the story onstage. For me, the filmmaker Eran Kolirin made what felt like a piece of theatre about people being stuck. That’s something that always interests me theatrically: people being stuck in one place. The story dealt with language barriers, people struggling to find the right words, and it was about musicians. It felt to me like it was a natural fit for the stage. My wife was into the idea, but everybody else thought it was a horrible idea. I was naïve and stubborn and passionate.

I tried to get in touch with Eran through his agents, and everybody said no. Finally, I got his email through a relative of mine and asked him for coffee during my annual summer visit to Israel. It took him 13 years to write and make the film, he said, and he didn’t want to reopen that door. The second time I met him, almost a year later, I said, “If you understood theatre the way you understand film, I think you would have chosen to make this as a play.” That was of interest to him.

DAVID YAZBEK: Boy, that’s a great line.

OW: I’ll never have a line that good again. It opened a flood of information from him. He sent me hundreds of pages of scripts that I had to have translated. And then we started. I got the rights and started thinking about it as a play and worked with Hartford Stage for a while. We did a reading of the screenplay onstage. My instinct was right: hearing these stories onstage and seeing these amazing characters just seemed to work.

Then it was a process of going through different versions and people asking me if it was going to be a play or a musical. I just wanted to tell the story. I didn’t know enough about musicals to think of it that way. Eventually, Hal Prince, who is a mentor of mine, got excited about the piece and asked to get involved to help develop it. We met, and [David] Yazbek and Itamar [Moses] ended up coming to the table with some ideas. There seemed to be this perfect perception of the piece that we shared.

We started approaching it as a more traditional musical, creating compositions and hearing songs, and Itamar creating scenes and a through line. Then [David] Cromer stepped in with a very serious and very deliberate approach and an idea about how he should stage it. It took about two years to get the rights.

When did Hal Prince come into the process? Was he a key connector to Yazbek and Moses? ITAMAR MOSES: Musicals are too hard, they take too long. In my heart I was saying: “no more musicals!” Then I and David [Yazbek] got an email from Hal Prince’s assistant. “Hal Prince would like to meet with you.” You don’t say no to that. Let’s say this was early 2013.

I hadn’t watched the movie. I knew it was a big hit in Israel and was this small but beloved indie film. The first time I watched it was with the question in mind, “Could this be on stage, could it be a musical?” I thought, “Oh no, this is a musical. I’ve got to do it.”

I felt the intimacy of the story, how much it depended on small connections between individuals, which theatre excels at. How still it was. And there was a very organic reason for there to be music in it. First, there’s this band. And second, music is one of the zones of connection between the people, a language that the characters use to communicate. I thought, “OK, that justifies it being a musical.”

I perversely really liked how unspectacular it was. I always feel that, in ideas for musicals that already seem like musicals, there’s a trap. You’re doubling down on something that’s already in the material. Something that seems to push against the musical form always interests me more.

When I first became involved, I thought I might be the right guy to do it, because my parents are Israeli, I’ve been there, I have relatives who live there, I have this tie to the region, I have voices from the region in my head.

DY: Orin contacted me. And there was that Hal Prince lore about it. You don’t say no. Soon I was on the phone with Itamar, trying to figure out if we were seeing the same tone. You can see a movie, even a movie as unique as The Band’s Visit , and see different things in it. I got excited about trying to create something that I’d never seen before in musical theatre. I was excited when we were speaking. I felt like we both had the same goal.

When you’re writing a musical, you’re living in a particular world for years. I was equally excited by the fact that I would get to live in the world of Arabic classical music, which I’m a big fan of. So, my trepidation turned into interest and that turned into excitement.

When did you connect to David Cromer? DY: The story gets really interesting when David comes aboard. I felt like we connected with the flint, the spark from the flint. His sensibility is right on the nose.

DAVID CROMER: I came in about two years ago, when I got a call from Itamar, who asked if I had seen the film or wanted to read the script or listen to the demos. I was just coming off being pretty burned out, sort of lost, running on fumes. I listened to the demos and got excited about the subject. I loved the story and loved the movie and got very excited about the music. It sounded like it could be something that would be an important and interesting little detour into how musicals generally seem, that you could execute anything if you execute this well.

Anything is an interesting idea if you find out what’s in it, if you find the DNA of it and make it manifest. And I think those guys have done that. I got very excited and campaigned. I was very nervous about the meeting we had to have, because I really, really wanted the job.

It’s largely just manifesting the writing, which is interesting enough as it is. The thing we accidentally did that was smart was to never run away from the film. The film is glorious unto itself. This is not an improvement on the film, this is not making the film better, this is not what the film wants to be. The film is the film, and we love it and we reference it and we never run away from it. We steal from it liberally. I said, “If this is a beloved film, then these are the iconic moments you have to have, like Rocky running up the stairs. You know what I mean? You have to see the front of the café, you have to see the guys lined up. You have to see the three of them at the table with the trumpet. We set about doing some workshops and started to cast it.

There are scenes without songs in this musical. There was a point where you guys were ahead of me, and it took me a while to catch up with certain things. There were developmental conversations, and we did about six months of readings and workshops when I came in. People were stopped by the nontraditional nature of it. There weren’t big group songs, and many of the songs were internal monologues.

IM: Yazbek and I discovered that through trial and error. We wanted to listen to what the material seemed to want and to honor that, but we would have moments where we’d say, “Well, surely, we need a number that does this, we need a big solo for this guy.” And every time we tried to push something like that into the material, we could feel the show rejecting it. Like a bad graft or something.

I’ve been able to watch Cromer quite closely for a couple of years on this, and I can now articulate a couple of things that make him special as a director. First, simply stripping away an actor’s bad habits or actor’s acting. You’ll often hear him say things like “Just sit in that chair like a person would sit in it” or “Just say that like a person would say it,” reminding them not to act. He’s aware of the way in which there is inherent dramatic intention in every moment of life, simply because we as humans living don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s dramatic that I don’t know the next question you’re going to ask, and I don’t know if I’m going to react to it effectively. It’s a matching of that to the material.

DC: One more interesting thing happened in the process of the piece rejecting material. … There’s a major character, Iris, played by a marvelous actress and wonderful singer, Kristen Sieh, who doesn’t have a song. We’re gloriously happy to have her, and the character leaves an enormous impression on the audience, but it became clear that the character wouldn’t sing. She has a beautiful voice, but that character simply wouldn’t sing. Where she was pitched as a character and what she’d been going through, that character wouldn’t participate in the show in that way.

Tony Shalhoub, George Abud, Alok Tewari, and Ari’el Stachel. Photo by Ahron R. Foster.

Tell us about composing and casting this world. DY: Some characters can be played by actors or actresses who are not good singers, if they deliver it right. I always think of Sam Levene who played Nathan Detroit in the original Guys and Dolls . And some of my favorite theatre singers are people who consider themselves bad singers. With a show like this, there are some characters you can say, as long as the character is in that voice, imperfections are fine.

But because this is a show about music, and because music is the deepest metaphor for the even deeper things we’re talking about in the show, you have to have some great voices. I’m not a fan of the trained theatre-type voice, you know? When Katrina Lenk came in and sat down and sang, I don’t remember what song she sang. She has an absolutely unique voice, the perfect voice for the character Dina, and the perfect voice for the song “Omar Sharif.”

IM: None of us knew her. We needed something very specific: a woman who has charisma, can sing all of those songs, is a great actor, can do the accents, could be from the region, and is of a certain age. Who is this? This person literally may not exist. And then she walked in, did the scenes, did the song. This has happened to me only a couple of times ever, where an actor is so good and so right, but you don’t know them. You have to start making phone calls because you don’t understand why this person isn’t already a giant star. Sometimes it’s just that those talents haven’t collided with the right opportunities.

DY: Then you learn that she’s a great violin player and a great violist.

DC: And a ballerina!

DY: There were so many remarkable individuals in this show, including George Abud, who is a great Arabic and Western musician who can also tap. There are eight great musicians in this show, not all of them in the band. Some of them are acting. And they all get to play from the heart. They all get to improvise. You get to hear what they’re feeling. I’ve never seen that in a show. I’ve never seen people who are world-class, not just musicians but also artists, who get to say something new every day musically.

DC: There are songs in the show that are instrumental that are performed by virtuosic performers who are not musical theatre singers. They’re not just singing. They’re front and center performing, singing with their hands and their lungs and their skill and their articulation.

The song that you decided didn’t make sense for the character to sing that you alluded to earlier — is that music somehow still in the show? DY: That song was a fast, pattery song for an angry character. It actually works in the context of the show, in terms of the musical lexicon of the show. The character didn’t want that much weight at that point of the story. I knew it as soon as we tried it. I was ready to get rid of it.

The character’s arc was right without it. I think the show is a great example of a certain axiom: if you try to write something cynically designed to appeal, to be about everything and to appeal to everyone, you end up writing something mushy and generic. This show is a great example of trying to be hyper-specific and authentic about a particular region and a particular group of people. Going through that wormhole, you come out the other side to a place of enormous universality.

DC: The universal is in the specific.

DY: That’s where the power of the show is, too: the specific, the moment, that individual split-second moment. That’s what Cromer serves, and that’s what we’re writing. That’s all I care about: the moment that you’re in.

This story appeared in the August/September 2018 print issue of Dramatics. Subscribe today to our print magazine.

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Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and Arizona 'fake electors' charged with state crimes

A state grand jury in Arizona on Wednesday indicted Trump aide s including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and Boris Epshteyn, as well as s o-called "fake electors" who backed then-President Donald Trump in 2020, after a sprawling investigation into the alleged efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election in the state.

One month after the 2020 election, 11 Trump supporters convened at the Arizona GOP’s headquarters in Phoenix to sign a certificate claiming to be Arizona’s 11 electors to the Electoral College, though Biden won the state by 10,457 votes and state officials certified his electors. The state Republican Party documented the signing of the certificate in a social media post and sent it to Congress and the National Archives.

Trump is described as “Unindicted Coconspirator 1” in the indictment, which includes charges of conspiracy, fraud and forgery. The document also describes people who have been charged in the case but have not yet been served and whose names are redacted: Meadows, Trump's former White House chief of staff; Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Trump attorney; Epshteyn, a Trump campaign official and attorney; former Trump campaign and White House official Mike Roman; former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis; former Trump attorney Christina Bobb; and John Eastman, another attorney and Trump legal adviser in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Epshteyn sat at the defense table with Trump when he was arraigned in his New York hush money case last year, though he has not appeared during the trial.

Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Giuliani, said in a statement Wednesday that Giuliani “is proud to stand up for the countless Americans who raised legitimate concerns surrounding the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.”

Also among those charged in Arizona is Kelli Ward, who served as chair of the Arizona GOP during the 2020 election and the immediate aftermath. She tweeted on Jan. 6, 2021, after the attack on the U.S. Capitol: “Congress is adjourned. Send the elector choice back to the legislatures.” Ward was a Trump elector and a consistent propagator of false claims that Arizona’s election results were rigged.

Others charged along with Ward as "fake electors" were: state legislators Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman; Michael Ward, Kelli Ward’s husband; Tyler Bowyer, the Republican National Committee's Arizona committeeman and the chief operating officer of the Trump-aligned Turning Point Action; Greg Safsten, the former Arizona GOP executive director; former U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon; Robert Montgomery, the former head of the Cochise County GOP; and Republican Party activists Samuel Moorhead, Nancy Cottle and Loraine Pellegrino.

Another passage of the indictment appears to describe attorney Kenneth Chesebro, one of the planners of the alleged scheme, as an unindicted coconspirator. Chesebro pleaded guilty last year in Georgia to conspiracy charges brought against him, Trump and 17 other people in the state. He is also believed to be one of the unidentified co-conspirators special counsel Jack Smith described in his federal election interference indictment of Trump last year.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, led the investigation. She won her election to be the state’s chief prosecutor in November 2022, replacing Republican Mark Brnovich, a onetime ally of Trump who later earned his scorn for not substantiating his claims of election fraud in the state.

"We conducted a thorough and professional investigation over the past 13 months into the fake electors scheme in our state," Mayes said in a video announcing the charges . "I understand for some of you today didn't come fast enough. And I know I'll be criticized by others for conducting this investigation at all. But as I've stated before, and we'll say here again, today, I will not allow American democracy to be undermined."

The Republican Party of Arizona said in statement posted to X that the indictments represented a “blatant and unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial power, aimed solely at distracting the public from the critical policy debates our country should be focusing on as we approach the 2024 election.”

“The timing of these charges-precisely four years after the 2020 election and as President Biden seeks re-election-is suspiciously convenient and politically motivated. This is not justice; it is pure election interference,” it said. “They do nothing but undermine the trust in our state’s legal processes and are clearly designed to silence dissent and weaponize the law against political opponents.”

The Arizona charges are the latest example of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election sprouting into legal cases during his 2024 bid to retake office.

Arizona was one of seven states where “alternate electors” signed paperwork falsely claiming Trump had won the states. Prosecutors have already charged “alternate electors” in Nevada , Georgia and Michigan .

Chesebro and others, including Eastman , argued in the months after the 2020 election that then-Vice President Mike Pence could use the existence of the alternate electors to name Trump the winner of the election as he presided over the electoral vote count in Congress on Jan. 6.

Eastman wrote in a memo: “At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. … There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.”

Trump lost Arizona by just under 11,000 votes. As the Republican electors sent illegitimate certifications to Washington, Trump sought to put pressure on Maricopa County officials and other Arizona Republicans, including then-state House Speaker Rusty Bowers and then-Gov. Doug Ducey.

Trump placed a phone call directly to Ducey as the governor certified the state’s election results. Ducey muted the call.

Mayes’ term as Arizona attorney general has been marked by other election cases stemming from Trump’s false claims about fraud in the 2020 election and after.

Last fall, Mayes charged two local officials who delayed the certification of midterm election results in 2022 in Cochise County. The officials voted against certifying the county’s election results by the statutory deadline after they aired baseless accusations about the integrity of the election for months. The county certified its election results only after a court ordered it to do so.

CORRECTION (April 30, 2024, 10:29 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the name of the organization where Tyler Bowyer works. It is Turning Point Action, not its affiliate Turning Point USA.

Vaughn Hillyard is a correspondent for NBC News.

Dareh Gregorian is a politics reporter for NBC News.

The Band's Visit Characters

By itamar moses , david yazbek, the band's visit character list.

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by Polly Barbour

Haled is really the most important character in the musical, primarily because it is due to his terribly mis-understandable accent that the band ends up on the wrong bus in the first place. Haled is vibrant, always on the move, bold and adventurous, which is why he is frequently the leader of the group by default. He is always a positive influence on the group and his pep-talk is the main reason for Papi's boost in confidence that enables him to finally talk to the girl of his dreams. Haled is an influence for good on others.

Tewfiq is the leader of the band, but his quiet authority and mellow demeanor mean that he is not always the chief motivator. He recognizes leadership qualities in others and this is why he gives Haled plenty of tasks and jobs to do. Tewfiq is sensitive and seems to avoid talking about his emotions, because the only way he can deal with them is by bottling them up. Tewfiq has had a difficult life and sadness has found him too much. Tewfiq does not date, per se, and is reluctant to go to dinner with Dina, but is surprised to find that the two have a lot in common. The one constant in his life has been music, and this is something he is able to share with Dina.

Another reason that Tewfiq doesn't talk much is his speech impediment; when he speaks, he has a stutter, but when he sings, it disappears. He is more able to express himself in song than in conversation. His singing voice is beautiful and hypnotic.

Tewfiq's family life is filled with tragedy. He and his son never got along and he feels a great deal of guilt about this, primarily because he believes his son committed suicide due to their horrible relationship. Shortly after his son's suicide, his wife killed herself out of grief. He does not feel comfortable talking to Dina about his family, perhaps feeling disloyal to them in some way, and he is therefore relieved when Haled arrives to ease his discomfort and give him an excuse to politely leave.

Dina is the smartest and most cosmopolitan woman in the town. Yes, it's remote, but she is aware of this, and has taken the trouble to educate herself about the wider world, and also to experience it the best way she can, which in her case is primarily on the radio. She has a love of music, and this is something that she and Tewfiq bond over. She has not had much luck in love and decides that fate has thrown her and Tewfiq together. She is a no-nonsense woman in her daily life, presiding over the cafe, the central point in town, but is also dreamy and romantic.

Simon is not a particularly well-developed character in terms of the audience getting to know him, but he acts as a conduit to the introduction of Itzik because he accepts Itzik's invitation to join him and his family for dinner. Simon is a gifted clarinet player. His music acts as a lullaby both to Itzik's baby son, and also to his wife, who is calmed enough by it to make up with her husband after their disagreement.

Itzik is a devoted family man with endless patience. He is not an ambitious or goal-driven man and this irritates his wife because she wants him to be driven by a greater sense of purpose than he has. He is father to a new baby and he seems to be a hands-on father, soothing his son with songs. He knows his wife well enough to realize that it is better to let her yell and scream and stomp out of the house, knowing she will calm down and return later, rather than arguing with her or begging her to come back before she is ready.

Avrum is Itzik's father-in-law. He is a widow who grieves for his wife, and who is also a character whose life has been positively touched by music. He and his wife first met in a music club so for him music forever after is a source of love and positive associations.

Papi spends his night at the roller rink ignoring the girl that he would give anything to date. He is a romantic lightweight and too scared to talk to her, but after a pep talk from Haled, manages to overcome his anxiety and approach her.

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The Band’s Visit Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Band’s Visit is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

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The Band's Visit study guide contains a biography of Itamar Moses, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About The Band's Visit
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The Band's Visit Summary
The The Band's Visit Community Note includes chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quizzes written by community members like you.
The Band's Visit (musical)
The Band's Visit is a stage musical with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book by Itamar Moses, based on the 2007 Israeli film of the same name.The musical opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in November 2017, after its off-Broadway premiere at the Atlantic Theater Company in December 2016.. The Band's Visit has received critical acclaim. . Its off-Broadway production won ...
Review: 'The Band's Visit' Is a Ravishing Musical That Whispers With
With songs by David Yazbek and a script by Itamar Moses, "The Band's Visit" is a Broadway rarity seldom found these days outside of the canon of Stephen Sondheim: an honest-to-God musical ...
The Band's Visit (Musical) Plot & Characters
The Band's Visit plot summary, character breakdowns, context and analysis, and performance video clips. Join StageAgent today and unlock amazing theatre resources and ... (with musicians planted all around the stage), The Band's Visit appeals to the universal romance and passion people find in music, no matter where they are from. Lead ...
The Band's Visit (2007)
This warm, heartfelt film follows the members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, led by the repressed Tawfiq, who after taking the wrong bus on their way to a cultural event, wind up on the doorstep of Dina (Elkabetz), a free-spirited cafe owner in a remote Israel village. After informing them they will be stuck there until the next ...
The Band's Visit
The Band's Visit (Hebrew: ביקור התזמורת, romanized: Bikur Ha-Tizmoret) is a 2007 comedy-drama film, directed and written by Eran Kolirin, and starring Saleh Bakri, Ronit Elkabetz, Sasson Gabai and Uri Gavriel.It is an international co-production between Israel, France and the United States.. The film received acclaim from critics and audiences.
The Band's Visit movie review (2008)
The eight men wear sky-blue uniforms with gold braid on the shoulders. They look like extras in an opera. They dismount from a bus in the middle of nowhere and stand uncertainly on the sidewalk. They are near a highway interchange, leading no doubt to where they'd rather be. Across the street is a small cafe. Regarding them are two bored layabouts and a sadly, darkly beautiful woman.
The Band's Visit: Musical Info & Synopsis
The Band's Visit tells the story of an Egyptian police band who finds themselves stranded in a remote village in Israel for a night due to a mix-up with their transportation. As the band members and the townspeople interact, language barriers and cultural differences dissolve through the universal language of music. This chance encounter ...
Broadway's 'The Band's Visit' Tells A Story Of Common Ground ...
Broadway's 'The Band's Visit' Tells A Story Of Common Ground Between Cultures Songwriter David Yazbek knew he wanted to write a musical that fused his two cultural backgrounds and avoid the tired ...
The Band's Visit
Dina, the local café owner, had long resigned her desires for romance to daydreaming about exotic films and music from her youth. When a band of Egyptian musicians shows up lost at her café, she ...
The Band's Visit
Marvel Movies In Order. Play Movie Trivia. The Band's Visit. PG-13 Released Feb 8, 2008 1 hr. 26 min. Comedy Drama List. 98% 120 Reviews Tomatometer 86% 10,000+ Ratings Audience Score The eight ...
Review: 'The Band's Visit' brings its musical poetry to Dolby Theatre
Dec. 2, 2021 4:17 PM PT. A musical doesn't have to make a lot of noise to dazzle. "The Band's Visit," the exquisitely delicate Tony-winning show now receiving its Los Angeles premiere at ...
The Band's Visit (musical)
The Band's Visit is a stage musical with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book by Itamar Moses, based on the 2007 Israeli film of the same name. The musical opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in November 2017, after its off-Broadway premiere at the Atlantic Theater Company in December 2016.
Theater Review: "The Band's Visit"
In 2018 — which now seems like decades ago — The Band's Visit, a 90-minute one-act musical, improbably took Broadway by storm. All the more shocking: the show, based on a 2007 Israeli independent film, contained few of the glamorous trappings of a traditional Broadway musical. Missing are big production numbers, swelling with sharp and ...
The Band's Visit (Musical) Plot Summary
Plot. Guide written by. Cindi Calhoun. The Band's Visit full plot summary including detailed synopsis and summaries for each scene.
The Cast Of 'The Band's Visit' On What Makes The Broadway Smash ...
The Band's Visit star Katrina Lenk performs at NPR's Tiny Desk on May 15, 2018. Eslah Attar/NPR. The Band's Visit is a Broadway musical that tells the story of human connection and commonality ...
'The Band's Visit' review: In moving musical, strangers from distinct
In moving musical 'The Band's Visit,' strangers from distinct Mideast cultures find harmony Magnificent Writers Theatre production of the Tony-winning show pulls you in to the characters' world ...
The Band's Visit review
At least the band has somewhere to sit. And it's music that drives the show forward, nudging the characters' anxious minds and clouded hearts. With its klezmatic clarinet, emphatic oud and a ...
The Band's Visit Study Guide: Analysis
The The Band's Visit Community Note includes chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quizzes written by community members like you.
The Band's Visit: From Movie to Musical
The Band's Visit has the rare honor of becoming a phenomenal success twice, first as a film and later as a musical. Both times, this beloved tale transcended its modest origins to capture the hearts and minds of audiences everywhere. Written and directed by Israeli filmmaker Eran Kolirin in his directorial film debut, The Band's Visit movie tells the story of the Alexandria Ceremonial ...
The Band's Visit
In December 2016, a musical theatre adaptation of The Band's Visit premiered in Atlantic Theater Company's Off-Broadway Linda Gross Theater. Eleven months later in November 2017, it opened at Broadway's Ethel Barrymore Theatre. It was nominated for 11 Tony Awards and won 10, including Best Musical as well as trophies for its direction, book, score, orchestrations, lighting, sound ...
The Band's Visit Themes
The Band's Visit study guide contains a biography of Itamar Moses, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. The The Band's Visit Community Note includes chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quizzes written by community ...
Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and Arizona 'fake electors' charged with
A state grand jury in Arizona on Wednesday indicted Trump aide s including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and Boris Epshteyn, as well as s o-called "fake electors" who backed then-President Donald ...
The Band's Visit Characters
The The Band's Visit Community Note includes chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quizzes written by community members like you.

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The Band's Visit

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