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Roll up, roll up to see the Band’s visit to Broadway

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Published: 13 November 2017

Last updated: 5 March 2024

BREAKING NEWS FOR BROADWAY theatre-goers, 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 Theatre. 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.

Instead, this portrait of a single night in a tiny Israeli desert town confirms a lyric that arrives, like nearly everything in this remarkable show, on a breath of reluctantly romantic hope: “Nothing is as beautiful as something you don’t expect.”

With songs by David Yazbek and a script by Itamar Moses, The Band’s Visit is a Broadway rarity seldom found these days outside of the canon of Stephen Sondheim: an honest-to-God musical for grown-ups. It is not a work to be punctuated with rowdy cheers and foot-stomping ovations, despite the uncanny virtuosity of Mr Yazbek’s benchmark score.

FULL STORY The Band’s Visit is a ravishing musical that whispers with romance (New York Times)

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