Katrina Lenk and Tony Shalhoub in The Band’s Visit at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York. Pictures: Matt Murphy
The Band’s Visit continues at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
After an ecstatically acclaimed Off-Broadway run last year, The Band’s Visit has journeyed onto Broadway and lovingly fills the expanded dimensions of the venerable Ethel Barrymore Theatre to the brim.
Director David Cromer has maintained the show’s thrilling intimacy, exploring the meanderings of the human heart as it finds connections with other beings, connections that can be too tenuous for tears but memorable all the same.
Furthermore, it’s a story that David Yazbek’s glorious score, overflowing with rhapsodic melody, mostly set against pulsating middle Eastern rhythms, lifts to a breathtakingly elevated plane.
Based on a 2007 Israeli movie, written and directed by Eran Kolirin, the sentient script by Itamar Moses tells of a small Egyptian orchestra that arrives in Israel to play at the opening of an Arabic cultural centre.
Because of a mishap in bus tickets they wind up in the wrong town, a small backwater place where, as the inhabitants tell us in the opening song, they spend their time “waiting for something, for any thing to happen”.
And things do indeed happen, as the band members spend a night in the town waiting for the correct bus the next day. It’s a night in which they interact, quietly but movingly, with the locals – representatives of cultures almost perpetually at mortal odds – simply as one soul to another.
The band’s trumpeter, Haled, a self-styled lothario, teaches a shy young Israeli café worker how to relate to his equally shy blind date at the local roller rink. The lesson is taught with a lilting Sinatra-style ballad, ‘Haled’s Song About Love’, one of the score’s rare departures from its haunting Arabic seasoning.
Alok Tewari, Andrew Polk and George Abud in The Band’s Visit
Two other musicians share a dinner with an Israeli married couple and the wife’s father, and join joyously with the father, who is also a musician, in song and dance as he tells how he met and fell in love with his late wife.
Later, one of the Egyptians plays a wistful solo on his clarinet to sooth the couple’s crying baby, and his music also ignites a rapprochement between the couple, whose marriage has been hitting some bumpy times.
Most significantly, the hard-edged café owner, Dina, whose husband deserted her some time ago, finds her emotions being awakened by the reserved and determinedly proper conductor of the band, Tewfiq, as they share an evening walk about the town.
Dina tells Tewfiq how as a young girl she watched Egyptian movies on television, enraptured by Omar Sharif, or was glued to the radio listening to the Egyptian superstar vocalist Oum Kalthoum.
An excerpt from the song provides a stellar example of the poetic storytelling of Yazbek’s lyrics: “Friday evening—Omar Sharif/In black and white and blurry through tears/My mother and I would sit there in a trance/He was cool to the marrow/The pharaoh of romance.”
Later, as Tewiq tells of the tragic circumstances of his marriage and Dina finds her feelings toward Tewiq ever deepening, she sings of suddenly finding “honey in your ears, spice in your mouth”.
That the potential passion between the two never ignites and ends with a polite farewell the next day is part of the show’s heartbreak and honesty.
The entire cast from the Off-Broadway run, with the exception of two roles, has made it to the Broadway run, and the passing of time has only deepened the masterful performances.
Tony Shalhoub magically generates an irresistible charm through the uptight veneer of Tewiq, while making every syllable of his dialogue crystal clear through a heavy Egyptian accent.
Katrina Lenk’s Dina is a marvel of mature beguilement, sinuous, seductive and no-nonsense all at the same time, an entanglement of vulnerability and strength.
Among other outstanding turns: Ari’el Stachel as the extroverted trumpet player; John Cariani as the hapless father of the crying baby, and Andrew Polk as his personable father-in-law.
But then one of the show’s triumphs is the authenticity and responsiveness of the entire company, including the musicians, who often take part in the storytelling as well.
Newcomers to the cast are Etai Benson as the bashful young café worker and Adam Kantor as “the telephone guy”, the lonely figure who waits by the town’s sole public telephone for his girlfriend to call. When she finally does, it sets off the show’s finale, ‘Answer Me’, a gorgeous chorale and ode to longing and connection.
Scott Pask’s set design, using a centrestage revolve, unobtrusively takes us to one part of the town after another, while Tyler Micoleau’s lighting well defines the passing of the hours on this desert community.
Sarah Laux’s costumes similarly define the cast of characters, from the “Sergeant Pepper” look of the band members’ powder blue uniforms to the thrift store ambience of the townsfolk garb.
As you may have gathered, The Band’s Visit is not your typical Broadway extravaganza. Hopefully, though, it will find the audiences it so deserves and will so enrich.
Ron Cohen
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.