Theatre review: The Band's Visit - A miraculous musical

The Band’s Visit
Donmar Warehouse | ★★★★★

There is a lot to love about this miraculous little musical whose world premiere won ten Tonys in New York.

Based on an Israeli film with an if-only-it-were-true plot, it imagines what would happen if an Egyptian ceremonial police band who have been booked to perform at the Arab culture centre in Petah Tikvah, central Israel discover too late that their bus ticket is for the similar sounding Bet Hatikva, a forgotten desert town in the south.

Michael Longhurst’s exquisite new production pairs two superb Israeli performers, Alon Moni Aboutboul, who plays Tewfiq, the band’s proud conductor, and Israeli singer and actress Miri Mesika, who is pitch perfect in both acting and singing senses as Dina, a cafe owner who takes pity on the visitors and organises food and shelter.

Alon Moni Aboutboul and Miri Mesika

Whether touring police bands actually travel in full uniform as these musicians do is just one of a few pedantic points that need to be set aside in order to suspend disbelief.

More important here than the factual truth is the emotional kind generated by this quietly told poignant story (adapted from the film by Itamar Moses) and the tender songs by composer David Yazbek that have musicalised it.

Longhurst’s production captures the ennui of a place whose main activity is doing very little. The first number, Waiting, is performed by the listless residents and when the title word is sung it is followed by the phrase “for something to happen”.

But then the bewildered, absurdly uniformed band turns up and over the following evening and night (the next bus is in the morning) lives are changed a little and for the better.

An Egyptian trumpet player (Sharif Afifi) teaches a painfully shy Israeli (Harel Glazer) how to talk to girls, and the distance between estranged parents Irisand Itzik (Michal Horowicz and Marc Antolin who theatregoers may remember as Chagall in The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk) is narrowed by an Egyptian clarinettist who while staying the night serenades their baby to sleep.

Ashley Margolis and Carlos Mendoza De Hevia

But central is how Tewfiq affects Dina and the other way round. As they sit on a bench in the night desert air their duet Omar Sharif is not only a tribute to the Egyptian films that floated on airwaves across the border to Israeli televisions, but also to a shared culture much deeper than a mutual love of hummus.

Mesika sings the number stunningly well and Aboutboul is pride personified as he superbly conveys the man beneath a mantle of formality.

The action or inaction is serenaded by excellent actor musicians, among whom flautist Andy Findon and percussionist Ant Romero thrill with virtuosic solos.

One other noteworthy element is that the show supports the case for authenticity casting, an issue that divides many theatregoers and theatre-makers. There are those who defend the right of an actor to transform themselves and those who say lived experience is what counts.

I’ve always been one of the former. And yet although the always excellent Peter Polycarpou as widower Avrum is as Jewish as you like (even though I don’t think the actor is) and Antolin is every inch a convincing Israeli (which I’m pretty sure the actor is not) for the most part the main characters here are played by semites whether the roles are Arab or Israeli. The result is that no matter how fictional the story, the evening has a palpable sense of truth and integrity.