Cast of The Band’s Visit; Photo by T Charles Erickson. Skyline by Aja M Jackson.
Co-presented by The Huntington & SpeakEasy Stage Company
Music & Lyrics by David Yazbek
Book by Itamar Moses
Based on the screenplay by Eran Kolirin
Directed by Paul Daigneault
Choreography by Daniel Pelzig
Music Direction by José Delgado
Dramaturgy by Vahdat Yeganeh
Intimacy consultation by Kayleigh Kane
November 15 – December 17, 2023
The Huntington Theatre
264 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
Review by Kitty Drexel
BOSTON, Mass. — The Band’s Visit is an adaptation of a 2007 movie of the same name by Eran Kolirin. The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra travels from Egypt to Israel to celebrate the opening of a cultural center. They arrive in a small town in the Negev Desert to find they are in the wrong place, there are no more buses, and no hotels.
Just as band leader Tewfiq (Brian Thomas Abraham) tells the band the news, cafe owner Dina (Jennifer Apple) offers the band hospitality. Members are situated in private homes for the night and do their best to make good impressions.
The natives sympathize with the band. The band finds commonality with the townsfolk. It is a visit they will never forget.
It was early summer in 2020, performance venues were still shuttered; Zoom theatre was going strong. Cafes and restaurants were serving customers outside. Toilet paper has returned to store shelves; cleaning wipes flowed down the aisles; the earth was healing. It might have been a Sunday in May or June.
I remember I carried my jacket over my left arm and held the coffee in my right hand. I was on my way from getting an iced coffee and tipping $5 on a $3.50 tab to support my local Somerville bakery.
As I waited at one of the only stoplights on Highland Ave, I heard several cold instruments warming up: the clarinet sounded rusty; the guitar was severely under. A Jewish wedding band was rehearsing in a member’s expansive, wildly overgrown with green backyard.
It had been four months since I had danced to live music or celebrated the communion of theatre with my community. We were still so scared of everything.
Tears of joy sprang from my eyes. A cry was on my lips. I was so overcome with relief at hearing live instruments that I began dancing where I was.
At that moment, it was the most beautiful music I had ever heard. I could have stayed there forever listening to them get reacquainted.
Cast of The Band’s Visit; Photo by T Charles Erickson.
This memory came hurtling at me as the “Overture’s” opening bars played. These are the messages of The Band’s Visit: People need music, poetry, and art like they need mother’s milk. Music, poetry, and, art have the power to connect disparate peoples.
The Band’s Visit is a perfect 90-minute musical. It welcomes you to a new place, introduces you to its rich, sometimes relatable characters, introduces a complication, resolves the complication creatively, and bids you goodbye. Its themes are complicated because people are complicated. The musical flows from scene to scene like a dream. The Audience is asked to consider the events occurring onstage, to invest in the romance and tragedy, and then go back to our own imperfect lives.
We’re even told why characters speak in English: it’s a common language between two peoples who speak Hebrew or Arabic.
The orchestration for this musical exists as a main character (like the orchestrations in Sweeney Todd). Music, band, and actors are symbiotic; they inform and support each other. There is no scene or interlude without musical commentary from The Band.
Music weaves its way between primary and secondary characters like an invisible thread pulling them towards each other and then guiding them away. It echoes the past, announces the present, and whispers the future.
Cast of The Band’s Visit; Photo by T Charles Erickson.
The band, led by José Delgado, meets the actors where they are. Its onstage contingent Mac Ritchey, Joe LaRocca, Wick Simmons, and Fabio Pirozzolo showed up to the performance with the same enriched presence as the actors without instruments. They played beautifully; their performances transported the audience out of the sparkling theatre on Huntington Avenue and into a dusty town in the Negev Desert.
Jennifer Apple performs ferociously as Dina. She sings “Omar Sharif” with translucent longing and uninhibited craving. She with equal parts strength to get through the day and unrestrained recklessness.
Dina has nothing to lose. Even rejection would be something different from the doldrums of indifference. Apple’s performance with the band hurled me back to the sidewalk in Somerville. Some cravings are so visceral they defy logic.
She is so desperate for poetry and music that she layers mystery onto an unsophisticated man (Brian Thomas Abraham who was mercifully aloof). Tewfiq may contain multitudes, but they are not for Dina.
It was satisfying to see Boston locals on the Huntington Avenue stage. They all performed excellently. I see you. I am ecstatically proud of you. I hope you are proud of the work you’re doing, too.
Because, given the political climate, this isn’t merely a musical production. It’s a mission statement: the violence between two warring bodies does not have to contaminate the civilians trying to live in peace.
No one wins in a war. We can call for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and demand an end to antisemitic hate crimes. There are innocent humans on either side of a conflict who deserve the chance at peace. Our government may not see it, but we do.
