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December 8, 2016

Boredom has never sounded sexier than it does in “The Band’s Visit,” the beautiful new musical by David Yazbek and Itamar Moses that opened on Thursday night at the Atlantic Theater Company. Most of the show is set in a small Israeli town where, its residents are eager to tell you, absolutely nothing happens. The name of this unhappy little village is not to be confused (as it crucially is by one of the show’s characters) with that of the bigger and more eventful Pet Hatikva. No, Bet Hatikva begins with a B, as in “basically bleak and beige and blah blah blah.” Yet as intoned in the opening song of this slyly seductive show, directed by an inspired David Cromer and starring a chemically bonded Tony Shalhoub and Katrina Lenk, such arid adjectives have a way of springing into bloom, perfuming the air with a yearning that teases the senses. All that “blah blah blah” is steeped in a somnolent restlessness that promises sweet awakenings.

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