RUTHFULLY YOURS

‘The Band’s Visit’ Review: Musical, Magical Misunderstanding The charming screen-to-stage story of a police orchestra that finds itself lost comes to Broadway with Tony Shalhoub among its stars.By Terry Teachout

Posted By Ruth King on November 11th, 2017

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-bands-visit-review-musical-magical-misunderstanding-1510277401

The best musical of the year has made it to Broadway. After a successful but far too short off-Broadway run at the Atlantic Theater, “The Band’s Visit” has moved uptown with all of its wondrous charm and warmth intact. Directed with supreme finesse by David Cromer and performed by the best cast imaginable, this small-scale show is fine enough to fill you with fresh hope for a genre that has lately been running on fumes. In an era of slick, sterile, big-budget, no-but-I-saw-the-movie commodity musicals whose sole purpose is to siphon cash from tourists with ruthless efficiency, “The Band’s Visit” shows that the great American art form (give or take jazz) is still full of life when practiced by artists who trust the taste and intelligence of their audiences.

Adapted for the stage by Itamar Moses and David Yazbek from Eran Kolirin’s 2007 Israeli film, “The Band’s Visit” is the story of a fictional occurrence that was, as one of the characters readily admits, “not very important.” The eight members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, it seems, have traveled to Israel from Egypt in order to perform at an Arab cultural center in the city of Petah Tikva. Such, at any rate, is their intention, but they’re sidetracked en route by a mispronounced consonant: Since there is no “p” sound in Arabic, most English-speaking Egyptians automatically replace that consonant with “b.” Slightly fractured English being the lingua franca of the modern-day Middle East, the musicians inadvertently find themselves in Bet Hatikva, a hopelessly provincial desert village whose cultural attractions consist of two restaurants, a roller rink, and a concrete “park” devoid of grass or trees.

In less knowing hands, this mishap might easily have been played for farce and nothing more. But while “The Band’s Visit” gets plenty of well-deserved laughs in its opening scenes, Messrs. Moses and Yazbek are hunting bigger game. We soon discover that the members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra and the bored residents of Bet Hatikva who spend their days “waiting for something to happen” all have something in common: They long for their little lives to be enlarged by love.

Some of the rest you can guess for yourself, but part of what makes “The Band’s Visit” so special is that it steers clear of the obvious. This is especially true when it comes to Tewfiq ( Tony Shalhoub ), the band’s conductor, and Dina ( Katrina Lenk ), the divorced café owner who offers to feed him and his men and put them up for the night. He’s rigidly proper, she’s tart-tongued and cynical, yet they’re both frustrated romantics under the skin. That’s the obvious part, and it is typical of “The Band’s Visit” that it leads to a denouement that will take you completely by surprise. CONTINUE AT SITE

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