The Band’s Visit: Middle East Peace on Broadway

In The Band’s Visit, eight members of a police band from Alexandria, Egypt, uniformed in powder blue, peer out from the Ethel Barrymore theater stage looking for their airport bus connection. As in the 2007 movie on which this delightful musical is based, through miscommunications, humorous language blips, the band ends up in the wrong place, in a small town in the Israeli desert and must spend the night. Following the motif of strangers coming to a place and changing it—and themselves-- forever, the play is a picture of diplomacy, with the band’s conductor Tewfiq (Tony Shalhoub) meeting Dina (Katrina Lenk), at the café where she works: “Welcome to Nowhere,” she sings, her ultimate perception of Arab men: Omar Shariff. Tewfiq could be a muted variation, once he takes off his hat.

Sexy and free spirited, Dina is hospitable, and happy for the diversion of showing the formal Tewfiq around. The band members too find places to stay among the Israelis, and while nothing much takes place at a family dinner, at a skating rink, at a pay phone where a young man waits for a call from his girlfriend, there’s more than enough to provide each with “Something Different.” The music and lyrics are David Yazbek’s best to date; playwright Itamar Moses’ book is brought to life under the fine direction of David Cromer, but it is the music, Middle Eastern/ Andalusian sound that makes a clash of cultures merge in common humanity. How that happens is the joy of this sublime show.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura