Theatre in Review: The Band's Visit (Atlantic Theater Company)

	John Cariani, Katrina Lenk, Daniel David Stewart. Photo: Ahron R. Foster.

Conventional wisdom has it that if you're going to write a musical, you need characters who sing; in other words, they need big emotions that can naturally spill over into song. It doesn't take much for Nellie Forbush, Dolly Levi, or Madam Rose to express themselves; they're so larger-than-life that music is all but mandated. Along these lines, the one show that Stephen Sondheim openly regrets is Do I Hear a Waltz?, written with Richard Rodgers. The show's heroine is so emotionally constricted, Sondheim says, that when she bursts into song, it feels forced and unconvincing; she is merely behaving as conventional leading ladies do. If he had the chance to do it over again, he claims, he would take away all her numbers.

All of which is to say that Itamar Moses and David Yazbek have taken on a tantalizing challenge in The Band's Visit, a musical populated entirely by the depressed, the taciturn, and the poker-faced; in addition, half of the characters are separated from the other half by a deep, impassable religious and political divide. This is not a world filled with cockeyed optimists. There are no songs in their hearts. Can they be made believable in a musical theatre context?

Surprisingly, Moses and Yazbek come close to pulling it off -- and if The Band's Visit isn't a total success, it may be for reasons not directly related to their work. In any case, it's an original, with one of the best new scores to be heard in several seasons.

Based on Eran Kolirin's well-received 2007 film, Moses' book traces what happens when the members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Band arrive in Israel to play at the opening of an Arab cultural center in a town called Petah Tikvah. Hebrew is a tricky language for the uninitiated, however, and, thanks to a mix-up with a bus ticket agent, the band ends up in Bet Hatikva, where there are no Arabs, no cultural center, indeed, no culture to speak of. The locals, striking poses of boredom and irritation, stare into the middle distance and sing, "Stick a pin in a map of the desert/Build a road to the middle of the desert/Pour cement on a spot in the desert/That's Bet Hatikva."

It's too late in the day to get a bus to Petah Tikvah, so the band members settle in for the night, warily agreeing to be hosted by the citizenry. What follows is a series of brief encounters that illuminate lives shaped, generally unhappily, by social expectations and lack of opportunity. The score offers some real beauties. The terse mood is shattered with brio when, in "Beat of Your Heart," the middle-aged Avram recalls his long-ago career as a musician and a woman he loved. Yazbek, a master of stream-of-consciousness lyrics -- think of "Model Behavior," from Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown -- provides another fine example in "Papi Hears the Ocean," in which the town's most awkward adolescent waxes despairingly on his inability to connect with the opposite sex. Dina, the owner of the café in the town center, wistfully recalls the Egyptian cinema of her youth, in a simply gorgeous reverie titled "Omar Sharif." ("My mother and I would sit there in a trance/He was cool to the marrow/The pharaoh of romance.")

Dina is more or less the central character, and Katrina Lenk perfectly nails her hard-edged, wised-up manner while subtly signaling a range of softer emotions carefully tucked behind the mordant face she shows to the world. She partners beautifully with Tony Shalhoub, as Tewfiq, the band's conductor, in an evening out that holds just a hint of romance. The script is scrupulously honest, however: Moses is well aware that no lives are going to be transformed in less than a day. In addition to Lenk, the cast boasts several standouts: Andrew Polk, as Avram, gives the show a much-needed jolt of energy with "Beat of Your Heart." Ari'el Stachel amuses as Haled, the band's in-house Romeo, whose standard line for the ladies -- "You know Chet Baker?", followed by a few crooned lines of "My Funny Valentine" -- proves remarkably unsuccessful; in one of his best scenes, he provides much-needed romantic advice to Papi, played as a funny-sad adolescent basket case by Daniel David Stewart. John Cariani is touching as an unemployed young husband and father, in over his head in both roles, and forever being castigated by his fed-up wife (Kristen Sieh). One especially striking image features the band's clarinetist, standing over the baby's crib, lulling it to sleep with a melancholy solo -- an interloper providing the child with peace in a way that its parents cannot.

What is rarely, if ever, mentioned is the biggest division that separates the characters, the Arab - Israeli conflict. Really, there's no need -- it's obvious -- and anyway, this is not a show for political editorializing. But seeing everyone casually, kindly reaching out to each other makes for a striking demonstration of what can happen when people let down their ideological guards. So much of The Band's Visit is so strong that I wish everyone involved had found a way to lend it a more defined dramatic profile. The script is little more than a series of vignettes strung together over a short 90-minute running time; Moses, perhaps by sticking to the original screenplay, hasn't managed to fuse these moments into a fully realized drama. It may be an impossible job; given the obvious constraints, any attempt at making more of the situation might seem dishonest. There is a climax of sorts, in a number titled "Answer Me," that uses, to good effect, the turntable in Scott Pask's set, revealing the panorama of loneliness and dissatisfaction that is the lot of those who live in Bet Hatikva. The number is initiated by a character named Telephone Man, who stands in the street, staring at a pay phone, practically willing his lover to call him. In David Cromer's production, it's an image worthy of an Edward Hopper painting.

Still, Cromer isn't a musical theatre person -- he has directed acclaimed productions of Picnic and Our Town, among others -- and while his steadfastly underplayed, naturalistic approach in many ways suits the material, it also makes for a certain amount of dead air between scenes and songs. Pauses are held longer than necessary. Musical numbers end without a flourish. At times, the production seems to judder from one thing to another. Such moments jar -- and not in a good way.

Still, Pask's set strikes the right note of desolation and moves blessedly quickly from location to location; the walls even jackknife open to reveal a series of mirrors for a scene set in a roller rink. Sarah Laux's costumes -- especially the baby blue uniforms for the band, which make a strong contrast with the casual wear of the townspeople -- feel authentic. Tyler Micoleau's lighting provides a colorful sunset, a lamplit living room, and plenty of saturated color for the roller rink. Maya Cirrocchi's projections -- most of them text-based -- provide some scene-setting crucial information. (The projection system was designed by Five OHM.) Clive Goodwin's sound design is a model of clarity.

At the top of the show, a projection reads, "Once, not long ago, a group of musicians came to Israel from Egypt. You probably didn't hear about it. It wasn't very important." At times, The Band's Visit feels very unimportant -- until another song has you under its spell. What's right about this show is so good that if you steel yourself for some disappointments, you may find yourself cheering. -- David Barbour