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The Band’s Visit

Show poster for The Band’s Visit
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The Band’s Visit

Opening Night: November 9, 2017
Closing: April 7, 2019
Theater: Ethel Barrymore

Prepare to be enchanted by The Band’s Visit, the uniquely beautiful new musical that won the hearts of critics and audiences alike during its sold-out engagement at the Atlantic Theater. An Egyptian Police Band arrives in Israel to play a concert. After a mix-up at the border, they are sent to a remote village in the middle of the desert. With no bus until morning and no hotel in sight, these unlikely travelers are taken in by the locals. Under the spell of the desert sky, their lives become intertwined in the most unexpected ways. The Band’s Visit celebrates the deeply human ways music and laughter connect us all Based on the multi-award winning film, The Band’s Visit is brought to Broadway by three-time Tony® nominee David Yazbek (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Full Monty), Drama Desk nominee Itamar Moses (Nobody Loves You, Fortress of Solitude) and acclaimed director David Cromer (Our Town, The House of Blue Leaves)
 

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NEW YORK TIMES BigThumbs_UP

Ben
Brantley

November 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.

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HOLLYWOOD REPORTER BigThumbs_UP

David
Rooney

November 9, 2017

One of the small miracles of The Band’s Visit is that this wistful new musical — in which themes of waiting, yearning and inertia play a significant part — weaves such seduction out of ephemeral encounters unfolding over a single uneventful night. As soothing as a cool breeze across desert sands, this gorgeous, minor-key show won a deserved cluster of awards in its premiere late last year at the Atlantic Theater Company. It transfers to Broadway with its delicate alchemy intact, borne aloft by the intoxicating Middle-Eastern rhythms of David Yazbek’s original score, and by the soulful performances of an exemplary ensemble.

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Entertainment Weekly
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Dana
Schwartz

November 9, 2017

The Arabic language doesn’t have an equivalent to the English letter “p” in its alphabet. That might have something to do with why an Egyptian military band traveling to Israel for a performance accidentally arrives not in the metropolitan Petah Tikvah, but instead in the (fictional) Bet Hatikva, a tiny dot of concrete in the middle of the Negev desert — that’s Bet Hatikva, with a “b,” as in “blah, blah, blah.”

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AM NEW YORK BigThumbs_UP

Matt
Windman

November 9, 2017

Broadway musicals traditionally begin with a bang, a rousing overture or an elaborate, entertaining and informative opening number to grab the audience’s attention. In stark contrast is “The Band’s Visit,” which begins with a tongue-in-cheek warning that it involves a small overseas incident — some Egyptian musicians who get lost in Israel — that “you probably didn’t hear about” and “wasn’t very important.” But from that point on, you’re hooked.

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TIME OUT NEW YORK BigThumbs_UP

Adam
Feldman

November 9, 2017

In a musical that is full of beautiful moments, perhaps the loveliest is the one shared on a plain park bench by Dina (Katrina Lenk), an Israeli café owner, and Tewfiq (Tony Shalhoub), an Egyptian bandleader stranded for the night in her uneventful desert town in 1996. As members of his ceremonial police orchestra play incidental music behind them, Dina asks Tewfiq how it feels to be a conductor. They each raise their arms, inhabiting an imagined experience together, and the music we have been hearing stops; what they feel is realer, and we are invited to imagine it with them.

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