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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

Writers: Itamar Moses David Yazbek

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Show Information

It is 1996, and through an error in pronunciation, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra is stranded in the isolated desert town of Bet Havitka, Israel (rather than the city Petah Tikva, their actual destination). Without knowing the language and with very little money, the band members - led by conductor Tewfiq Zakaria - are welcomed by the locals, including cafe owner Dina and her two employees, Papi and Itzik. During this one night in a sleepy town where nothing much changes, the Egyptian band members and their Israeli hosts communicate in English (their only common language) and find their mutual love of music, whether traditional Middle Eastern ballads or American jazz and Chet Baker. Winner of ten Tony Awards and a score based in traditional middle eastern styles (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.

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The Band's Visit (2007)

Original title: ביקור התזמורת.

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A small Egyptian police band travels to Israel to play at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab arts center, only to find themselves stuck in the wrong town.

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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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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. 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. 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.

• Eran Kolirin
• Sasson Gabay
• Ronit Elkabetz
• Saleh Bakri
• 73 User reviews
• 112 Critic reviews
• 80 Metascore
• 46 wins & 16 nominations

• Lieutenant-colonel Tawfiq Zacharya
• (as Sasson Gabai)

• Major-general Camal Abdel Azim

• (as Tarak Kopty)

• Man with yellow ball

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The movie was selected to be Israel's Official Submission to the Best Foreign Language Film Category of The 80th Annual Academy Awards (2008) , but it was disqualified by AMPAS because more than 50% of the film's dialogue was found to be in English, as opposed to Arabic and Hebrew. After an unsuccessful appeal, Israel sent Beaufort (2007) instead.
• Goofs When speaking in Arabic, Tawfiq pronounces some words with the Egyptian Arabic pronunciation, and some words with the Palestinian Arabic pronunciation. Being an Egyptian, he should talk in Egyptian Arabic dialect all the time.

Lieutenant-colonel Tawfiq Zacharya : This is like asking why a man needs a soul.

• Connections Featured in Sharon Amrani: Remember His Name (2010)
• Soundtracks My Funny Valentine (From musical "Babes in Arms", 1937) Music by Richard Rodgers Lyrics by Lorenz Hart

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 27 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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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.

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Your last-minute guide to Monday's total solar eclipse

A total solar eclipse will cross North America on Monday , offering millions a rare opportunity to see afternoon skies temporarily darken as the moon blocks the face of the sun.

Tune into NBC News NOW as Lester Holt hosts a two-hour special at 2 p.m. ET Monday from Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The eclipse's path fortuitously cuts across Mexico, 15 U.S. states and a small part of eastern Canada. In all other states in the continental U.S., viewers will be treated to a partial solar eclipse, with the moon appearing to take a bite out of the sun and obscuring part of its light.

Here’s everything you need to know about the rare celestial event.

What is a solar eclipse?

Solar eclipses occur when the sun, moon and Earth align. The moon passes between Earth and sun, temporarily blocking the sun’s light and casting a shadow on Earth.

A total solar eclipse is when the moon fully obscures the sun, whereas a partial solar eclipse means it blocks just a portion of the sun’s face.

Solar eclipses occur only with the new moon. Because the moon’s orbit around Earth is tilted, the three bodies don’t always line up in a way that creates an eclipse.

“Imagine if the moon’s orbit were in the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun — if that were the case, then every new moon, you’d have a total solar eclipse and every full moon, you’d have a lunar eclipse,” Neil DeGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, told NBC News. “So, because things don’t always align, it lends to the rarity of the event and the specialness of the event.”

Where and when will the eclipse be visible?

This year’s eclipse will follow a slightly wider path over more populated areas of the continental U.S. than other total solar eclipses have in the recent past.

NASA estimates that 31.6 million people live within what’s known as the path of totality, where the total solar eclipse will be visible. An additional 150 million people live within 200 miles of the path, according to the agency.

The path travels through Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Tiny parts of Michigan and Tennessee will also be able to witness totality if conditions are clear.

After the eclipse crosses into Canada, it will pass over southern Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton, at the eastern end of Nova Scotia.

Those outside the path of totality can still take part in the astronomical event by viewing a partial solar eclipse — visible throughout all 48 states of the contiguous U.S. — or a NASA livestream.

The timing, including how long totality lasts, depends on the location, but some spots will see the moon fully cover the sun for up to 4 minutes and 28 seconds.

Below is a list of timings for some cities along the path of totality, as  provided by NASA . A number of other resources, including NationalEclipse.com  and  TimeandDate.com , can also help people plan.

• Dallas: Partial eclipse begins at 12:23 p.m. CT and totality at 1:40 p.m.
• Little Rock, Arkansas: Partial eclipse begins at 12:33 p.m. CT and totality at 1:51 p.m.
• Cleveland: Partial eclipse begins at 1:59 p.m. ET and totality at 3:13 p.m.
• Buffalo, New York: Partial eclipse begins at 2:04 p.m. ET and totality at 3:18 p.m.
• Lancaster, New Hampshire: Partial eclipse begins at 2:16 p.m. ET and totality at 3:27 p.m.

How to safely view a solar eclipse

It is never safe to gaze directly at the sun, even when it is partly or mostly covered by the moon. Special eclipse glasses or  pinhole projectors  are required to safely view solar eclipses and prevent eye damage. Failing to take the proper precautions can result in severe eye injury,  according to NASA .

Eclipse glasses are thousands of times darker than normal sunglasses and specially made to enable wearers to look at the sun during these kinds of celestial events.

Sky-watchers should also never view any part of the sun through binoculars, telescopes or camera lenses unless they have specific solar filters attached. Eclipse glasses should not be used with these devices, as they will not provide adequate protection.

However, during the few minutes of totality, when the moon is fully blocking the sun, it is safe to look with the naked eye.

Beware of fake eclipse glasses. On legitimate pairs, the lenses should have a silver appearance on the front and be black on the inside. The manufacturer’s name and address should be clearly labeled, and they should not be torn or punctured. Check, as well, for the ISO logo and the code “IS 12312-2” printed on the inside.

If you don’t have eclipse glasses, you can make a homemade pinhole projector, which lets sunlight in through a small hole, focuses it and projects it onto a piece of paper, wall or other surface to create an image of the sun that is safe to look at. 

All you need is two pieces of white cardboard or plain white paper, aluminum foil and a pin or thumbtack. Cut a 1- to 2-inch square or rectangle out of the center of a piece of white paper or cardboard. Tape aluminum foil over that cut-out shape, then use a pin or thumbtack to poke a tiny hole in the foil.

During the eclipse, place a second piece of white paper or cardboard on the ground as a screen and hold the projector with the foil facing up and your back to the sun. Adjusting how far you hold the projector from the second piece of paper will alter the size of the image on the makeshift screen.

What to look for while viewing the total solar eclipse

For people along the path of totality, there are some fun milestones to keep track of as the total solar eclipse unfolds.

As the eclipse progresses and the sun gets thinner in the sky, it will start to get eerily dark, according to Tyson.

When the last beams of sunlight are about to become obscured, look out for the “diamond ring effect”: The sun’s atmosphere will appear as an illuminated halo, and the last light still visible will look like the diamond of a giant ring.

As the sunlight decreases even further, an effect known as Baily’s beads will be created by the moon’s rugged terrain. Tiny “beads” of light will be visible for only a few seconds around the dark moon, as the last bits of sunlight peer through the moon’s mountains and valleys.

When the moon is fully blocking the sun, it is safe to remove eclipse glasses and look at the total solar eclipse with the naked eye.

Some lucky sky-watchers may even catch a glimpse of a comet .

Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks — nicknamed the “ devil comet ” because an eruption last year left it with two distinct trails of gas and ice in the shape of devil horns — is currently visible from the Northern Hemisphere as it swings through the inner solar system.

The comet can be seen in the early evenings by gazing toward the west-northwest horizon. During the eclipse, when skies darken during totality, it may be possible to see the comet near Jupiter, but its visibility will depend on whether it’s in the middle of an outburst and thus brighter than normal.

Most likely, all eyes will be on the alignment of the moon and sun.

“Most people won’t even notice,” Tyson said. “But if you know to look, it’s there.”

When is the next solar eclipse?

The next total solar eclipse will be in 2026, but it will mostly pass over the Arctic Ocean, with some visibility in Greenland, Iceland, Portugal and northern Spain. In 2027, a total solar eclipse will be visible in Spain and a swath of northern Africa.

The next total solar eclipse visible from North America will be in 2033, but only over Alaska. Then in 2044, a total solar eclipse will cross Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, parts of Canada and Greenland.

The next total solar eclipse to cross the continental U.S. coast-to-coast in will occur in 2045. The path of totality for that eclipse will cut through California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Florida.

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

Lucas Thompson is a content producer for the NBC News Climate Unit.

Review: THE BAND'S VISIT at Dolby Theatre

An exquisite look at the magic of music to heal and inspire. The national tour plays through December 19

It's one of the most common themes found in Broadway musicals: a culturally stagnating town is rejuvenated when an outsider arrives on the scene, affecting everyone in the process. You've seen this device in such shows as The Music Man, 110 In the Shade, Footloose, and The Sound of Music , to name but a few. But never has that formula worked better than in The Band's Visit , the Tony-Award winning musical about a misdirected Egyptian band that arrives in a culturally desolate Israeli town only to magically revive its residents through the power of love and of music. The national tour of the show, which began by playing Off-Broadway in 2016, arrived in Los Angeles on November 30 for a three-week run at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. We were there to see it and to also attend a special event the following day at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel that featured interviews with four of the show's cast as well as to hear performances by the show's extraordinary band of on-stage musicians.

The Band's Visit was an unlikely winner of the 2018 Tony for Best Musical because it's really an anti-musical. There are no rousing production numbers, no acts of violence, no sweeping romances, and no real conflict. It's just a quiet show with an underlying premise that emphasizes people communicating on a personal level without the interference of borders, be they geopolitical or cultural. Who would have thought that a story that featured characters from such long-standing opposing factions like Egypt and Israel would not only be bereft of political and cultural conflict, but which showed that they had more in common than they had differences? The Band's Visit returns to the kind of shows Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt used to write, such as The Fantasticks and 110 In the Shade , each of which exhibited the same elements of magic and warmth, small shows about people and their relationships, without resorting to typecasting.

The recent passing of Stephen Sondheim still hovers over the Broadway world like a shroud, which made The Band's Visit a show that exemplifies Sondheim's out-of-the-box thinking about what made a Broadway musical effective and special. Based on Eran Kolirin's 2007 screenplay, the story tells of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, a traveling group of Egyptian musicians, who are stranded at a Tel Aviv bus station when neither their cultural attache nor their chartered bus shows up. As a result, the orchestra's leader Colonel Tewfiq Zakaria decides to take a public bus to their destination, the city of Petah Tikvah, but due to a mishearing by the bus station's ticket clerk, they end up in the isolated village of Bet Hatikva, where they are forced to spend the night until the next bus arrives the following morning. Due to the efforts of Dina, a sympathetic cafe owner, the band members are taken in as guests for the night by the other cafe patrons.

The company of The Band's Visit (Photo by Evan Zimmerman, MurphyMade)

The idea of stranded travelers who are taken in by hospitable strangers in a foreign town was most recently used in Come From Away , another Tony-Award winning musical, but in The Band's Visit , it's the visitors who make the greater impact on their hosts rather than the other way around.

Sasson Gabay, who originated the role of Tewfiq in the 2007 film, returned to play the part in the musical and gives a deeply moving performance. At the press event, Gabay, who was born in Iraq but grew up in Israel, told us, "In a way, this character was with me all the time. We did it in 2007 and it was highly acclaimed; we won many festivals and awards, so it was kind of career changing for me. In a way, it accompanied me, this role. In 2010, the producer of the musical approached me about doing it on Broadway, which to me was a crazy idea, but I politely said yes (laughs). After eight years, they produced it and I was so curious to see how they could make a musical out of it. The film was so human, with a very small budget - and I was really amazed how they could take this delicate film and turn it into a delicate musical, which is not a typical Broadway musical. Everything works with the same aroma of the movie. Of course, I had matured during these years, as a person and as an actor, and I think I bring more weight to the character than I did when I was younger."

Playing Dina in the national tour is Janet Dacal, an extraordinarily beautiful Cuban-born actress who combines the sensuality of Brazilian star Sonia Braga with a purringly ravishing soprano that resembles that of the late Eartha Kitt. "Dina's encounter with Tewfiq is something that she's been yearning for for a very long time, an authentic, real, human exchange," Dacal told VC On Stage. "It's more than a physical connection, it's intellectual. So because of that, she's able to be seen in a way that she hasn't been seen by the people of her own town."

Sasson Gabay (Tewfiq) and Janet Dacal (Dina) (Photo by Evan Zimmerman, MurphyMade)

Through the course of their evening together, Dina and Tewfiq share an affinity for Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum and actor Omar Sharif (in the enchanting song, "Omar Sharif"), with Tewfiq sparking a tender memory that Dina hasn't thought about in a long time. "Because of that unexpected exchange, she starts to open up," Dacal said.

In the show, the villagers of Bet Hatikva have lost their own traditions, their cultural lives now wrapped up in anything that is American. The main recreational activity in town is a roller rink, in which skaters skate to a disco version of Bobby Hebb's 1967 hit "Sunny." Other American pop songs are invoked in scenes, such as "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess and Rodgers and Hart's "My Funny Valentine." But in scene after scene, the members of the Egyptian orchestra help bring the native musical culture back to the town, which has a curative effect on their problems, healing a squabbling married couple (Clay Singer and Kendal Hartse), a shy young man (Coby Getzug) afraid to approach a girl he likes, a crying baby that won't go to sleep, another young man (Joshua Grosso) who has been waiting at a public telephone for months for his girlfriend to call him, and most of all, cafe owner Dina (Dacal), who is desperately reaching out for a human connection, who she finally finds in Tewfiq.

"I think the whole piece is magical," Janet Dacal told us. "When you allow yourself to experience something different and new, you don't know how it can affect you, and that's what happens in the course of this evening. The locals get to experience the music and the culture that maybe they haven't opened themselves up to and it triggers something in them that may seem very minimal and small but it is profound."

In return, Dina's effect on Tewfiq triggers an emotional release in him as well, revealing highly traumatic events in his own life that have left him detached and emotionally resistant. The connection between the two occurs in an extraordinarily beautiful moment in a local "park" (actually just a bench placed out in the desert), in which he shows her how he conducts his orchestra and she mimics his arm motions.

If the very human story depicted in The Band's Visit can be seen as a painting, the on-stage orchestra serves as the palette of colors with which it is painted. The music played by the members of the on-stage seven-piece band, which includes conventional orchestral instruments like clarinet, cello, and violin, combined with Arabic instruments like the twelve-string oud, and the crisp percussion of the bongo-like darbouka, float in and out of every scene, either appearing on the periphery to accent dialog or featured in between-scene interludes. Even the band's powder-blue uniforms, which one villager likens to the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper" outfits, brighten up the drab desert hamlet.

The songs, which were composed by David Yazbek ( The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels ) are exceptionally beautiful, and are scored to allow the orchestra members to improvise, utilizing traditional Middle-Eastern tropes that give the show its rich atmosphere.

The cast includes Ventura County native Coby Getzug, who plays Papi, a cafe worker who learns how to overcome his anxiety around females with the help of band member Haled's (Joe Joseph) prompting, in a touchingly funny scene at the roller skating arena. Getzug talked about his character by saying, "I think there's something really beautiful about choosing to connect, even though it might be easier to retreat. I think there's beauty in the simple act of leaning forward instead of leaning away."

Joe Joseph (as Haled) (Photo by Evan Zimmerman, MurphyMade)

"Leaning forward" is one of the overriding themes in the show, for its characters as well as for the audience. Due to the show's understated, droll humor and the deliberateness of the dialog, audience members are drawn into the intimate atmosphere of this quietly profound show in a way that, in effect, reduces the size of the theater to that of the Off-Broadway theater where it got its start.

The other main attribute of The Band's Visit is its singularity as a uniquely attractive musical, delightfully different in its story and its music, while at the same time, delivering a message of unity, love, and humanity that gives hope to a world that has become increasingly political and polarized. As Dina sings in "Something Different," "Nothing is as beautiful as something you don't expect." The Band's Visit shows that lyric's effect on not just the villagers of Bet Hatikva, but on anyone who sees this enchanting musical.

The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra performs (photo by Evan Zimmerman, MurphyMade)

The Band's Visit plays through December 19 at the Dolby Theatre, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood. For tickets, visit www.ticketmaster.com. The tour will also play in Costa Mesa at Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts from March 22 - April 3, 2022.

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