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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.

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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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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

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”The Band’s Visit” musical – meet the European premiere cast

Alon Moni Aboutboul and Miri Mesika

In the meantime, however, you can get to know four principal cast members – Miri Mesika (who plays Dina), Alon Moni Aboutboul (Tewfiq), Yali Topol Margalith (Anna) and Peter Polycarpou (Avrum) – as we recently sat down with the talented quartet to get their thoughts on the highly anticipated production.

Telling the story of a band of Egyptian musicians who, after a slight miscommunication, travel to a small town in the middle of the Negev Desert in Israel instead of their intended bustling city destination, The Band’s Visit features a score by David Yazbek and book by Itamar Moses, based on the screenplay by Eran Kolirin.

Alongside Mesika, a seven-time Israeli Female Singer of the Year Award winner, Aboutboul, Margalith and Polycarpou, the company also includes Sharif Afifi, Andy Findon, Marc Antolin, Harel Glazer, Levi Goldmeier, Ido Gonen, Michal Horowicz, Emma Kingston, Shira Kravitz, Nitai Levi, Ashley Margolis, Carlos Mendoza de Hevia, Ant Romero, Idlir Shyti, Maya Kristal Tenenbaum, Sargon Yelda and Baha Yetkin.

Under the direction of Michael Longhurst, the production’s creative team features musical supervisor Nigel Lilley, designer Soutra Gilmour, lighting designer Anna Watson, sound designer Paul Groothuis, choreographer, movement director and intimacy director Yarit Dor, casting director Anna Cooper, musical director Tarek Merchant, associate director Orr Benezra-Segal, assistant musical director Natalie Pound, resident assistant director Dadiow Lin, cultural consultant Dr Lina Khatib, Arabic music consultant Attab Haddad and dialect coach Caitlin Stegemoller.

The Band’s Visit runs at the Donmar Warehouse until 3 December 2022.

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'The Band's Visit' review — this exquisite gem of a show finds the extraordinary in the ordinary

Read our four-star review of The Band's Visit , the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical now premiering at the Donmar Warehouse in London to 3 December.

Marianka Swain

“Who can live without hope?” That’s the quietly profound takeaway from David Yazbek and Itamar Moses’s exquisite gem of a show, The Band's Visit , which swept the Tonys in 2018 – winning 10 awards, including Best Musical. An adaptation of the 2007 film of the same name, it’s a modest premise: in 1996, an Egyptian orchestra travels to Israel to play at the opening of a new Arab cultural centre, but accidentally wind up in a dead-end town instead.

A wry introduction downplays it even further, teasingly saying of this event “You probably didn’t hear about it. It wasn’t very important.” And, in the grand scheme of things, that might be true. But just by spending time with this small group of people, we witness the miraculous truth that you can find the extraordinary within the ordinary, that wider international conflicts melt away when you put human beings together, and that music and stories are the lifeblood of any community.

This happy accident stems from a mispronunciation: the band mean to travel to Petah Tikvah, and instead find themselves in (the fictional) Bet Hatikvah. That leads to the gloriously incongruous sight of the Alexandra Ceremonial Police Orchestra, in their perfectly pressed pale-blue uniforms, awkwardly milling around the dusty café of this desert wasteland – and gawped at by the idling locals.

The latter bemoan in song that this is a place where nothing happens: it feels like they’re “moving in a circle” laments one man, as he literally spins around on the stage’s revolve – one of numerous deliciously witty touches in Michael Longhurst’s meticulous production. But they’re not the only ones who are stuck, and, as the locals accommodate these strangers for the night, an unlikely exchange occurs that sets them all on a new path.

The most intense of these is between the buttoned-up conductor, Colonel Tewfiq Zakaria, and blunt café owner Dina. The former won’t even remove his hat initially; the latter is all frank, earthy sensuality and passionate outbursts. She even chops watermelon with furious abandon. But the mismatched pair begin to find connections: both are lovelorn and lonely, and they share a love of Arab culture. In the ravishing “Omar Sharif”, Dina recalls her adoration of the actor in the movies she watched as a girl – a song so suffused with longing and desire that you almost feel voyeuristic.

And yet that’s topped by the moment in which Tewfiq shows Dina how to conduct, in silence. Each has cracked the other open, and what passes between them is now beyond words. This dynamic is handled with tender dignity by Alon Moni Aboutboul, who gradually sheds Tewfiq’s gruff layers, and Miri Mesika, the Israeli superstar singer. The latter is simply a knockout: her voice is so rich, so velvety, that you get lost in its depths.

The subplots all have sweet moments and comic value, but are more variable. Most charming is the roller disco double date, in which the lothario trumpeter Haled (a suitably flirtatious Sharif Afifi) helps Papi (an endearing Harel Glazer) to overcome his romantic anxieties. Meanwhile violinist Camal and a local boy known only as Telephone Guy get into a hilarious stand-off over who has possession of the only payphone (Carlos Mendoza de Hevia and Ashley Margolis are a fantastic double act).

Clarinettist Simon confesses his writer’s block to host Itzik, his wife Iris, and her father Avrum (a great turn by Peter Polycarpou). The men bond over how music can fuel love, as Avrum recalls meeting his late wife, and Simon and Itzik start to inch forward in their lives. However, Iris gets the short straw: she’s written as grumpy and hysterical, when in fact her response is pretty reasonable: she works fulltime as carer, while her husband remains unemployed, and she also looks after their newborn baby and both men. Generally, the women – other than Dina – are underdeveloped here. A shame in a piece that otherwise takes such care with its characterisation; it slightly broke the spell for me.

But you forgive an awful lot thanks to the sheer wonder of Yazbek’s score, which mixes traditional Arabic music with Broadway ballads, rhythmic jazz and beguiling klezmer to stupendous effect. And the performers are equally phenomenal, especially woodwind player Andy Findon and percussionist Ant Romero. The boundaries blur between actor and musician, song and speech, and between languages and nationalities.

Soutra Gilmour’s set gives them free rein, with minimal furniture and stone steps at the back where the band congregate, while Anna Watson’s lighting smoothly shifts us into the intimate, confessional night where kindess, patience, just listening helps to unburden the soul, climaxing in the yearning plea of song “Answer Me”. Not much happens here – and yet everything happens. Captivating.

The Band's Visit at the Donmar Warehouse to 3 December.

Photo credit: Alon Moni Aboutboul and Miri Mesika in The Band's Visit at the Donmar Warehouse (Photo by Marc Brenner)

Originally published on Oct 7, 2022 11:09

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‘The Band’s Visit’ review

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The Band’s Visit, Donmar Warehouse, 2022

Time Out says

This bittersweet, idiosyncratic musical about a lost Egyptian band gets a gorgeous UK premiere

The original US production of ‘The Band’s Visit’ stormed the 2018 Tony Awards and spent 18 months on Broadway. Which is pretty wild when you consider it’s a barely 90-minute musical with no interval, no dance routines, no power ballads and performed in Arabic, Hebrew and heavily accented English.

I’m sure that production was great. But it feels like the right decision to have David Yazbek and Itamar Moses’s musical effectively start from scratch in the UK, in a new production from the Donmar’s Michael Longhurst that couldn’t be in a more perfect theatre.

It’s adapted from a 2007 Israeli indie film about an Egyptian police band that arrives in Israel to play at the opening of an Arab cultural centre in the city of Petah Tikvah, but accidentally gets a bus to Bet Hatikvah , a fictional one-horse town in the middle of the desert. It has no Arabic cultural centre, or, indeed, hotel – something that becomes a problem when the band realise they’re stranded there overnight.

For a moment, it looks like ‘The Band’s Visit’ will be a sort of Middle Eastern ‘Come from Away’ – an aggressively heartwarming drama about a group of people who randomly end up in a small town and everybody grows and learns something, vom vom vom.

In fact it’s a beautiful, haunting work about loss, loneliness and the desire for human warmth. Though an ensemble production, its headed up by Alon Moni Aboutboul’s stiffly dignified old band leader Tewfiq and Miri Mesika’s restless, unfulfilled local cafe owner Dina. She takes a shine to him and much of their night is spent sat at a local restaurant, making small talk, obliquely flirting and enquiring about each other’s pasts – which they only get into tangentially, with huge revelations kept to a minimum.

The other strands to the story are similarly delicate. There’s the band member who calls the Egyptian embassy from a pay phone jealously guarded by a local lad who has been waiting a month for his girlfriend to ring. There’s Sharif Afifi’s Casanova-ish younger band member Haled, who is desperate for something to do and blithely inveigles his way onto a double date at the town’s roller rink. And there’s the stressed young married locals whose tensions are exacerbated by having clarinettist Simon (Sargon Yelda) stay with them.

All of the stories are marked by a gossamer fragility and a wilful incompleteness, a sense we’re just getting flashes. Yazbek’s songs don’t add razzle dazzle. They offer a delicate magic: exotic instrumentals, hesitant ballads and the odd, sparing bit of witty wordplay. Longhurst’s still yet fluid production feels full of the hush and intimacy of the night – the songs are little bursts of wonder, none of them blowing the roof off, all of them making the air tingle. Soutra Gilmour’s set is minimalist in the extreme, but a nifty little revolve keeps the pace up perfectly when needed. 

Much of the magic is to do with the exceptional casting (big props to casting director Anna Cooper). In an international ensemble of mostly (possibly entirely) Middle Eastern extraction, the band members all really play instruments, with many taking on substantial acting roles too. There’s something ineffably beautiful about the mournful solo trumpets or clarinets that cut through the night air; and then the percussive, rhymic roar of their final ensemble instrumental tune is pure joy, morning sun exploding over the horizon after a long night. 

It’s anchored by Israeli actors Mesika and Aboutboul: her Dina tough, charming, lost; his Tewfiq dignified, wounded, wise. They’re not big flashy roles though: everyone on stage essentially has a small part that they nail, and it feels like the sum is greater than the individual parts, a vivid snapshot of a temporary community. 

Should we make anything of the fact it’s a show about Arabs and Israelis getting on with each other? It certainly doesn’t lay it on very thick: nationality, ethnicity and religion are barely touched upon. Indeed, the wry message that bookends the show – ‘it wasn’t very important’ – is perhaps testimony to the fact the writers are wary of making a Big Statement. 

Instead it’s a romantic, inventive, deeply disarming show about how we’re all defined by the need for connection. Given it was a hit on Broadway, I’m sure it could be a hit on the West End. But I wonder how easy it would be to hold this sprawling and uniquely talented international ensemble together; and, frankly, it’s hard to see how such an intimate show could possibly have the same impact in a big, formal West End playhouse. Catch it before it slips away into the night.

Andrzej Lukowski

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Culture | Theatre

The Band’s Visit at the Donmar Warehouse review: the humane spirit of this show is irresistible

the band's visit london cast

Israeli townsfolk and an Egyptian police band find common ground in this witty, delightfully odd chamber musical by American composer-lyricist David Yazbek and writer Itamar Moses. Deftly sketching a series of empathetic encounters over a single night, The Band’s Visit also thrillingly blends Middle Eastern and Western musical traditions, and splices passages of Arab and Hebrew dialogue – completely comprehensible without subtitles, by the way – into the script.

Michael Longhurst ’s European premiere features a cosmopolitan cast, with a standout lead vocal performance from Israeli star Miri Mesika. It’s staged on a plywood and breezeblock set by Soutra Gilmour that neatly suggests the Negev desert location and the longing all the characters feel. Longhurst’s production is slow in some early moments, overcrowded at others, but as a fantasy of micro-level harmony in a troubled region, utterly charming.

The show debuted in 2016 in the US and won the “big six” Tony Awards for musical theatre on Broadway the following year. The story is drawn from a 2007 Israeli film written and directed by Eran Kolirin. Thanks to the particularities of Arab pronunciation, a police orchestra scheduled to play at a cultural festival ends up in a no-horse desert town. Initially guarded, the habitually bored inhabitants slowly unbend to the promise of excitement borne by the incomers with their “Sergeant Pepper” uniforms.

Café proprietor Dina (Mesika) is particularly taken with the stiff, courtly conductor Tewfiq (Alon Moni Aboutboul, handsome, gravelly but over-emphatic). She shows him the town, and they eventually, briefly, show each other their hearts.

the band's visit london cast

Flirtatious trumpeter Haled (Sharif Afifi) has the worst chat-up line in the world: “You have beautiful eyes. Do you like Chet Baker?” But he piggybacks on a local foursome’s double-date at a roller disco and ends up giving romantic advice. The violinist and clarinettist are awkwardly billeted on an argumentative young couple with a new baby and a loitering father-in-law (Peter Polycarpou, having fun). They bring about accord through music.

As suspicions and cultural differences dissolve, the score moves away from the early, klezmer-inflected snark of songs like Welcome To Nowhere and It is What it Is to something warmer and more full-throated. Dina’s song Omar Sharif, celebrating the shared cultural currency of the Middle East, is particularly lovely. There are a couple of delicious comic songs, a lullaby, and a penultimate number by a character called Telephone Guy, whose long wait for his girlfriend’s call ends up standing for universal fellowship.

Many performers in this large cast get few or no lines. The acting is iffy at the edges and the pacing is off at the start. But the humane spirit of this show is irresistible and the core group of musicians and actor-players very tight indeed. When the band finally gets to perform its signature tune at the end – with virtuoso solos for clarinet, goblet drum and the lute-like oud - I’m amazed the audience didn’t mob the stage and dance along.

Donmar Warehouse, to 3 Dec; donmarwarehouse.com

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Cast announced for UK premiere of The Band’s Visit at London’s Donmar Warehouse

Casting has been announced for the European premiere of The Band’s Visit at London’s Donmar Warehouse.

Announced earlier this year as part of the venue’s 2022 season, The Band’s Visit will run from 24 September to 3 December 2022.

Adapted from the Israeli film of the same name, the piece has music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book by Itamar Moses. The musical previously ran on Broadway in 2017 where it picked up ten Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Book and Best Score

Leading the company are award-winning film, TV and stage actor Alon Moni Aboutboul and seven-time winner of Israeli Female Singer of the Year award, and judge on Kokhav Nolad , the Israeli version of American Idol , Miri Mesika .

They are joined by cast and onstage band of Sharif Afifi , Jason Alder, Marc Antolin , Harel Glazer , Levi Goldmeier , Ido Gonen , Michal Horowicz , Emma Kingston , Shira Kravitz , Nitai Levi , Yali Topol Margalith , Ashley Margolis , Carlos Mendoza de Hevia , Peter Polycarpou , Ant Romero, Idlir Shyti, Maya Kristal Tenenbaum, Sargon Yelda and Baha Yetkin.

“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.” In a quiet desert town way off the beaten path, a band of musicians arrive lost. As they wait for the next bus out, these unexpected visitors bring the town to life in surprising ways, proving that even the briefest visit can stay with you forever. Winner of 10 Tony Awards and a Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album, The Band’s Visit rejoices in the way music makes us laugh, makes us cry, and ultimately, brings us together.

Michael Longhurst will direct the new production with musical supervisor Nigel Lilley, designer Soutra Gilmour, lighting designer Anna Watson, sound designer Paul Groothuis, choreography, movement & intimacy director Yarit Dor, casting director Anna Cooper CDG, musical Director Tarek Merchant, associate director: Orr Benezra-Segal, assistant musical director Natalie Pound, resident assistant director Dadiow Lin, cultural consultant: Dr Lina Khatib, Arabic music consultant Attab Haddad and dialect coach Caitlin Stegemoller

Joining the creative team in CATALYST roles are assistant designer Lucy Sneddon, assistant lighting designer Cat Salvini and assistant sound designer Daberechi Ukoha-Kalu.

For more information and tickets, visit donmarwarehouse.com .

More on: Donmar Warehouse Emma Kingston Marc Antolin Sargon Yelda Sharif Afifi News

Josh is Stageberry's editor with over five years of experience writing about theatre in the West End and across the UK. Prior to following his passion for musicals, he worked for more than a decade as a TV journalist.

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THE BAND’S VISIT

Having won 10 Tony Awards and a Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album, The Band’s Visit is finally landing in town for its UK premiere. The Donmar Warehouse is hosting the US smash hit musical written by David Yazbek and Itamar Moses, directed by the theatre’s Artistic Director, Michael Longhurst. The story follows a band of Egyptian musicians who get lost in the Israeli desert on their way to the Arab cultural centre and end up significantly affecting the quiet town they stumble upon off the beaten track.

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The Band's Visit

“ 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. ”  Winner of 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Original Score,  The Band's Visit  is an intimate musical about the brief yet lasting connections we make in our lives.

The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrives in Israel to play a concert. After a mix-up at the border, they are sent to Bet Hatikva, a remote village in the middle of the desert. For the residents of Bet Hatikva, life is aimless and monotonous. With no bus until morning and no hotel in sight, the unexpected travelers from the orchestra are taken in by the locals. Under the spell of the desert sky, their lives become intertwined in the most unexpected ways.

With a haunting score by David Yazbek ( Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Full Monty ) and contemplative book by Itamar Moses ( Boardwalk Empire ,  The Fortress of Solitude ),  The Band's Visit  is a carefully crafted gem of a musical.

Show Essentials

David Yazbek

Welcome to Nowhere

It is what it is, the beat of your heart, omar sharif, papi hears the ocean, haled's song about love, itgara'a, something different, itzik's lullaby, something different (reprise), the concert, cost estimator.

Estimate the approximate cost of your licensing fees by providing a few details about your production.

A montage of the Broadway production of The Band's Visit.

the band's visit london cast

The Broadway cast of The Band's Visit performs an NPR Tiny Desk Concert

the band's visit london cast

Composer David Yazbek performs his work from The Band's Visit and discusses the show

the band's visit london cast

A clip of Katrina Lenk performing "Omar Sharif" from her Tony-winning performance in The Band's Visit

A clip of Katrina Lenk performing "Omar Sharif" from her Tony-winning...

A collection of moments from the Broadway production of The Band's Visit.

the band's visit london cast

Recording "Welcome to Nowhere" for The Band's Visit cast album

the band's visit london cast

Questions & Answers

Licensing the band's visit.

I'm a member of a college theater group, and I'm looking towards staging The Band's Visit in April 2021. Would it be available for licensing by September 2020? Thanks!

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The Band’s Visit – Donmar Warehouse

the band's visit london cast

Alon Moni Aboutboul and Miri Mesika in The Band’s Visit at the Donmar Warehouse, London. Picture: Marc Brenner

The Band’s Visit continues at the Donmar Warehouse, London until 3 December 2022.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The 10-time Tony Award-winning The Band’s Visit finally pulls into London’s Donmar Warehouse for its European premiere and has immediately become the capital’s must-see show.

As much as I’ve harped on during my tenure here at MTR about the laziness of turning movies into musicals, here is one of those rare examples of a match in heaven, where the songwriting truly serves to augment and enrich the storytelling.

Eran Kolirin’s original screenplay of The Band’s Visit – a modest but critically acclaimed Israeli movie from 2007 – was transmuted into a book musical by Jewish American playwright Itamar Moses and composer-lyricist David Yazbek, who has previous with movie conversions: Tootsie , Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown , Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and The Full Monty . The songs and the score layer beautifully into the story and are every bit as important as the characters.

The result is an exquisite gem of a show – a quiet, breathy, achingly romantic musical that wafts over you like a warm sirocco wind.

The Donmar’s artistic director, Michael Longhurst, is at the reins, and he and designer Soutra Gilmour keep the staging as simple as the storyline. This is a show that speaks volumes in its silent moments, and Longhurst’s experienced and light touch ensures that every nuanced line of dialogue or beat is executed to perfection. On press night, the auditorium was at times pin-drop silent – an electrifying experience for an audience so enraptured that they can barely breathe.

A projection at the top of the show tells us that a group of musicians came to Israel from Egypt. ‘You probably didn’t hear about it,’ says the writing on the wall. ‘It wasn’t very important.’ But for some of the inhabitants of a small desert commune, it proves to be the most important night of their lives.

The musicians are the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, who arrive in Tel Aviv for a cultural exchange concert and who end up accidentally taking the bus from the airport not to nearby Petah Tikva but to the distant (fictional) town of Bet Hatikva, an isolated outpost in the Negev Desert. There, they are met with a Jewish community who, despite their initial misgivings and distrust of the Arabs, quickly warm to their uninvited guests.

The residents of Bet Hatikva comprise Marc Antolin (Itzik), Harel Glazer (Papi), Peter Polycarpou (Avrum), Maya Kristal Tenenbaum (Julia), Michal Horowicz (Iris), Ido Gonen (Sammy), Emma Kingston (Sammy’s wife), Levi Goldmeier (Zelger), Yali Topol Margalith (Anna) and Ashley Margolis (Telephone Guy). This downtrodden lot introduce us to their depressing township (‘Waiting’ and ‘Welcome to Nowhere’), and in Avrum’s tender ‘The Beat of Your Heart’ we begin to see how people who might not be able to communicate using language – the dialogue is conducted mostly in broken English – can find a common voice in music.

The onstage band also has featured roles for Sargon Yelda (Simon/violin) and Carlos Mendoza de Hevia (Camal/clarinet), and Sharif Afifi (Haled/Trumpet) more than delivers on his role as the band’s casanova. Multiple threads emerge, with the various band members having interesting encounters with the locals.

This really is an ensemble piece but sharing the top billing is Alon Moni Aboutboul as the band’s leader, Colonel Tewfiq Zakaria, and Miri Mesika as Bet Hatikva’s cafe owner Dina, who welcomes the band into her humble establishment for the night.

Aboutboul – an Israeli actor with an impressive array of recent US TV credits – is perfectly cast as the starched Colonel and band leader. His performance is impressively measured and still, but he slowly peels back his layers, culminating in the beautiful Arabic hymn ‘Itgara’a’. He also has a usefully uncanny resemblance to movie star Omar Sharif, which plays into the storyline.

It’s Tunisian-Iraqi Mesika, though, who steals the show as the enigmatic and complex Dina. It comes as no surprise to read that she’s a best-selling and multi-awarding-winning recording artist in Israel and beyond. She’s also a natural actress, whose Dina is as compelling as she is believable. Her treatment of ‘Something Different’, which folds sensuously around Tewfiq’s ‘Itgara’a’, is mesmerising.

Well, I say Mesika steals the show but thinking back now, I suspect that the real star of the night might have actually been the incredible talent that is Andy Findon. You might not have heard the name – I certainly hadn’t – but you’ve definitely heard him perform, as he’s ‘Europe’s most recorded flute player’, having played for the likes of Stevie Wonder, Tony Bennett, The Beach Boys, Michael Nyman and Joni Mitchell, and recorded soundtrack albums for Phantom , Swee ney Todd, Cats, Evita, Mamma Mia! and Les Mis. Here, he’s wrangling an array of woodwinds and given the freedom to let rip with some exceptionally impressive solos.

In fact, the onstage Police Orchestra is formed from the most astonishingly talented – and diverse – group of performers: joining Brit Findon is Spain’s Ant Romero on percussion (wow, sensational!), Albanian cellist Idlir Shyti and Turkish oud player Baha Yetkin. I’d’ve paid the ticket price just to see this lot perform together, and hope that the Donmar might even consider scheduling a gig or two with this stunning line-up. Check out their biographies in the programme – these instrumentalists really are the best in the world at what they do.

The remaining musicians – Nicki Davenport (bass), Luke Baxter (percussion), led by MD Tarek Merchant – are nestled in the upper wings of the Donmar, and fill out Yazbek’s gorgeously exotic desert music (with orchestrations by Jamshied Sharifi and Andrea Grody, Arabic musical consultant by Attab Haddad, and musical supervision by Nigel Lilley). The evocative score is beautifully balanced, so band-caps off to sound designer Paul Groothuis for allowing us to hear every word clearly.

The Band’s Visit is an intelligent piece for the grown-ups, but devoid of pomposity or pretentiousness. It’s light and delicate – a distant melody caught in the wind – and its many emotional aches and pains are balanced with humour and quirkiness. It’s always without agenda – as apolitical a show can be that’s about Arabs and Jews being thrown together unexpectedly.

The residents of Bet Hatikva, mis-sold a new life in the desert after the founding of Israel, are an excluded, isolated tranche of society, drawn from immigrants seeking the promised land. So the arrival of yet more immigrants – even Arabs – ultimately engenders not hate or fear but mutual respect and curiosity.

The uniting factors are the commonly shared loves that transcend borders: food, music, movies and sex. This is all captured wonderfully in Yazbek’s Middle East-infused score and Moses’ witty, intelligent book, and the Donmar provides just the right level of intimacy for a show of this size, placing you at the heart of the story. The Band’s Visit is effectively a celebration of the human condition and of the levelling and transformative power of art. Don’t miss it – it’s 100 minutes of pure bliss.

Craig Glenday

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Alon Moni Aboutboul , Andy Findon , Ashley Margolis , David Yazbek , Donmar Warehouse , Emma Kingston , Ido Gonen , Itamar Moses , Levi Goldmeier , Marc Antolin , Maya Kristal Tenenbaum , Michael Longhurst , Michal Horowicz , Miri Mesika , Peter Polycarpou , The Band’s Visit , Yali Topol Margalith

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All contents © Musical Theatre Review, 2013 - 2019. All rights reserved. Published by Musical Theatre Review, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, UK. ISSN 2632-4318

The Band's Visit Cast & Creative

The critically acclaimed new musical that celebrates the deeply human ways music and laughter connect us all.

This show is closed.

Performances ended on Apr. 7, 2019.

About The Band's Visit

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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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, and Celeste O'Connor in Page Eight (2011)

When the discovery of an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, Ghostbusters new and old must join forces to protect their home and save the world from a second ice age. When the discovery of an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, Ghostbusters new and old must join forces to protect their home and save the world from a second ice age. When the discovery of an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, Ghostbusters new and old must join forces to protect their home and save the world from a second ice age.

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  • Runtime 1 hour 55 minutes
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COMMENTS

  1. 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 ...

  2. The Band's Visit cast announced at the Donmar Warehouse

    The Donmar Warehouse in London has revealed the cast for its forthcoming European premiere of David Yazbek and Itamar Moses' musical The Band's Visit. The multi-Tony award-winning show will be directed by Donmar Warehouse Artistic Director Michael Longhurst, and will run at the Donmar from 26 September to 3 December 2022.

  3. 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 ...

  4. The Band's Visit review

    Alon Moni Aboutboul and Miri Mesika in The Band's Visit. Photograph: Marc Brenner ... I loved spending time with his poker-faced cast, masters of shrug and eye roll. ... London, until 3 December ...

  5. Reviews: What Do London Critics Think of The Band's Visit?

    Alon Moni Aboutboul and Miri Mesika in The Band's Visit Marc Brenner. Reviews are in from critics for David Yazbek and Itamar Moses ' Tony-winning The Band's Visit , which opened its U.K ...

  6. The Band's Visit Tickets London

    The Donmar Warehouse in London has revealed the cast for its forthcoming European premiere of David Yazbek and Itamar Moses' musical The Band's Visit. The multi-Tony award-winning show will be directed by Donmar Warehouse Artistic Director Michael Longhurst, and will run at the Donmar from 26 September to 3 December 2022.

  7. 'The Band's Visit' sets cast at Donmar Warehouse

    See the actors visiting the Donmar Warehouse! The cast has been set for the European premiere of The Band's Visit, David Yazbek and Itamar Moses's musical, which won multiple Tony Awards on Broadway.. Leading the cast are award-winning stage and screen actor Alon Moni Aboutboul as Tewfiq, and seven-time Israeli Female Singer of the Year award winner Miri Mesika as Dina.

  8. "The Band's Visit" musical

    The European premiere of The Band's Visit. welcomes the critics to the Donmar Warehouse tomorrow evening, so be sure to check WhatsOnStage on Friday for our review of the Grammy and ten-time Tony-winning musical!. In the meantime, however, you can get to know four principal cast members - Miri Mesika (who plays Dina), Alon Moni Aboutboul (Tewfiq), Yali Topol Margalith (Anna) and Peter ...

  9. The Band's Visit (London, Donmar Warehouse, 2022)

    The Band's Visit. London. Musical. Donmar Warehouse. 41 Earlham Street, London WC2H 9LX, London, EN. SYNOPSIS: In an Israeli desert town where every day feels the same, something different is ...

  10. 'The Band's Visit' review

    'The Band's Visit' review — this exquisite gem of a show finds the extraordinary in the ordinary 'The Band's Visit' review — this exquisite gem of a show finds the extraordinary in the ordinary. Read our four-star review of The Band's Visit, the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical now premiering at the Donmar Warehouse in London to 3 December.

  11. 'The Band's Visit' review

    This bittersweet, idiosyncratic musical about a lost Egyptian band gets a gorgeous UK premiere. The original US production of 'The Band's Visit' stormed the 2018 Tony Awards and spent 18 ...

  12. The Band's Visit Makes U.K. Premiere at London's Donmar ...

    International News The Band's Visit Makes U.K. Premiere at London's Donmar Warehouse Starting September 26. Directed by Michael Longhurst, the Tony-winning musical will officially open October 6.

  13. The Band's Visit: the humane spirit of this show is irresistible

    The show debuted in 2016 in the US and won the "big six" Tony Awards for musical theatre on Broadway the following year. The story is drawn from a 2007 Israeli film written and directed by ...

  14. The Band's Visit musical

    The European premiere of The Band's Visit welcomes the critics to the Donmar Warehouse tomorrow evening, 6 October 2022, so be sure to check WhatsOnStage for...

  15. Cast announced for UK premiere of The Band's Visit at London's Donmar

    As they wait for the next bus out, these unexpected visitors bring the town to life in surprising ways, proving that even the briefest visit can stay with you forever. Winner of 10 Tony Awards and a Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album, The Band's Visit rejoices in the way music makes us laugh, makes us cry, and ultimately, brings us together.

  16. The Band's Visit

    The story follows a band of Egyptian musicians who get lost in the Israeli desert on their way to the Arab cultural centre and end up significantly affecting the quiet town they stumble upon off the beaten track. website. 24th September - 3rd December 2022. 41 Earlham St, London WC2H 9LX. OPENING HOURS.

  17. The Band's Visit

    Full Cast Info. Music and Lyrics by. David Yazbek. Book by. Itamar Moses. Full Billing. Songs. Overture. Waiting. ... and I'm looking towards staging The Band's Visit in April 2021. Would it be available for licensing by September 2020? Thanks! ... London W1T 3JJ. T: +44 (0)20 7580 2827. F: *44 (0)20 7436 9616.

  18. Cast Set for U.K. Premiere of The Band's Visit at London's Donmar

    International News Cast Set for U.K. Premiere of The Band's Visit at London's Donmar Warehouse. Directed by Michael Longhurst, the Tony-winning musical will begin previews September 24.

  19. The Band's Visit

    The Band's Visit continues at the Donmar Warehouse, London until 3 December 2022.. Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ The 10-time Tony Award-winning The Band's Visit finally pulls into London's Donmar Warehouse for its European premiere and has immediately become the capital's must-see show.. As much as I've harped on during my tenure here at MTR about the laziness of ...

  20. 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 ...

  21. The Band's Visit Announces Cast

    The critically-lauded Off-Broadway musical The Band's Visit, which is making the trek to Broadway this coming season, will retain many of the original cast members, including star of stage and screen Tony Shalhoub as "Tewfiq". For its Broadway berth. the cast will feature Katrina Lenk (Indecent) as "Dina," John Cariani (Something Rotten!) as "Itzik," Ari'el Stachel (We Live in…

  22. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

    Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: Directed by Gil Kenan. With Mckenna Grace, Annie Potts, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd. When the discovery of an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, Ghostbusters new and old must join forces to protect their home and save the world from a second ice age.

  23. Check Out New Production Photos From London's The Band's Visit

    Production Photos Check Out New Production Photos From London's The Band's Visit. Directed by Michael Longhurst, the Tony-winning musical will officially open October 6 at the Donmar Warehouse.

  24. Meet the Cast of The Band's Visit on Broadway

    The Broadway transfer of the musical The Band's Visit will... 21 PHOTOS. Cast and Creative Team. John Cariani, Andrew Polk, Tony Shalhoub, Katrina Lenk, Ari'el Stachel, Etai Benson, Adam Kantor ...

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