Experience Writers Theatre’s exceptional ‘Band’s Visit’
Uncommonly lovely, exquisitely intimate, “The Band’s Visit” is entirely without pretense.
A chamber musical about music’s capacity to unite and soothe, “The Band’s Visit” — in an enchanting regional premiere at Writers Theatre co-produced with Arkansas’ TheatreSquared — is a modest show whose negligible plot is rooted in linguistic misunderstanding.
Composer/lyricist David Yazbek and playwright Itamar Moses’ gently humorous, quietly compassionate tuner centers on a brief, relatively insignificant encounter between ordinary folks. It’s a beautiful show in a warm, engaging revival from director Zi Alikhan, whose cast of actor/musicians is superb.
“Once, not long ago, a group of musicians came to Israel from Egypt. You probably didn’t hear about it,” says Sophie Madorsky’s world-weary cafe owner Dina. “It wasn’t very important.”
If not for a mistaken interpretation, Egyptian conductor Tewfiq (Rom Barkhordar) and his Alexandra Ceremonial Police Orchestra musicians would have arrived in the cosmopolitan Israeli city Petah Tikva as intended to play for the opening of an Arab cultural center. Instead, after taking the wrong bus, they end up in the fictional, desert backwater of Bet Hatikva, whose residents spend their time waiting: for something to happen, for something to change.
The locals adopt for the night the stranded musicians. Chet Baker-loving trumpeter and persistent flirt Haled (Armand Akbari, a sweet-voiced charmer) invites himself along on a roller-skating outing with Papi (Sam Linda), a young man nervous around women; the goth girl Julia (Becky Keeshin) who likes him; her friend Anna (Marielle Issa); and Anna’s boyfriend Zelger (Jordan Golding).
Camal (Adam Qutaishat) and composer Simon (Jonathan Shaboo) join Itzik (Dave Honigman) and Iris (Dana Saleh Omar), new parents in a troubled marriage, and Iris’ musician father Avrum (Michael Joseph Mitchell), who grieves his recently departed wife.
Meanwhile, over dinner with Tewfiq, Dina recalls century Egyptian singer/actress Uum Kalthoum, a childhood favorite, in the dreamy “Omar Shariff” (Madorsky’s performance is lush and intoxicating). Bonding over music and old movies, their innocent tête-à-tête is interrupted by Dina’s married lover Sammy (Jacob Baim).
Leaving the restaurant, they encounter Telephone Guy (a winsome, nicely vulnerable Harper Caruso) who stands at a pay phone, awaiting a call from his beloved. Caruso’s penultimate “Answer Me,” one of the highlights of Yazbek’s elegant score, is an aching expression of longing. Beginning as a solo, it swells to include the entire ensemble, a reflection of the yearning within these characters. Decent folks all, they live with their regrets, wistfully resigned, and without bitterness or self-pity.
In the brief time they spend together, not much changes for the locals and their guests. Why should it? Music doesn’t disappear problems. But when shared with friends (or strangers) it can make them bearable.
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“The Band’s Visit”
4 stars
Location: Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe, (847) 242-6000, writerstheatre.org
Showtimes: 3 and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday; 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday; 2 and 6 p.m. Sunday through March 24. No matinee March 20
Tickets: $35-$90
Running time: About 95 minutes, no intermission
Parking: Street parking
Rating: For teens and older