The Band's Visit: the triumph of a marching band on Broadway
i24NEWS ·
Report from Broadway for i24NEWS's magazine Orient on The Band's Visit, the musical based on The Band's Visit, the Israeli film that won an award at Cannes in 2007. "The scene is set": the Egyptian police band of Alexandria, lost, ends up in Bet Hatikva, "with a B". The show has all the themes behind Broadway's success, offbeat stories, a love story and catchy lyrics, at a much calmer pace. The atmosphere of 1990s Israel is well rendered in this fairy tale that mixes the ordinary with a surprising encounter between Dina, who runs a small cafe, played by Katrina Lenk, and the band's conductor, Tewfiq, "masterfully played" by Tony Shalhoub, best known as Monk. The film's lead actress, the late Ronit Elkabetz, was a major inspiration for the new Dina. Surprisingly, the play is not political at first glance: a recent, abstract but credible past that lets the audience identify with the characters without having to pick a side. It is the first time a Broadway play is performed with so many Israeli and Egyptian accents in English, "giving a voice to the Middle East as rarely before." Darbukas and klezmer clarinets: "this cultural mix is also what makes this Broadway show a timeless little gem." After Oslo, which won a shower of Tony Awards the year before with a historical play about the peace accords between Israelis and Palestinians, The Band's Visit repeated the feat in music with 10 awards, for "a pacifist parenthesis, but without bias." After Tony Shalhoub, the original actor of the film, Israeli Sasson Gabay, takes over his own role of Lieutenant-Colonel Tewfiq at the Barrymore Theatre, before a tour starting in 2019. With interviews of Tony Shalhoub, Katrina Lenk, John Cariani and Andrew Polk. Report by David Benaym for i24NEWS's magazine Orient in French, June 28, 2018.