By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo from Broadway in Tucson
Haled (Joe Joseph) becomes an ambassador of joy in his band uniform.
So far in the new Broadway in Tucson season, this vigorously productive company has brought us a fully blown and unrestrained “Hamilton,” followed by the Broadway pedigreed and totally refined classic, “My Fair Lady” plus a fantasy visit from “Wicked.”
Now in an exquisitely delicate turnabout of programming, Broadway in Tucson is presenting “The Band's Visit,” adapted from the 2007 Israeli film of the same name, the kind you'd expect to see at Tucson's own Loft Cinema.
The winner of 10 Tony awards, including Best Musical of 2018, “The Band's Visit” plays to the theatergoer who appreciates more subtle tones and a slower pace. The music and lyrics by David Yazbek (“The Full Monty,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”) and book by Itamar Moses (based on the original screenplay by writer/director Eran Kolirin) are filled with the sort of quiet magic that draws one's attention to the stage from the most distant seat.
Without a hit song or spangled singer in sight, this show fills Centennial Hall at the University of Arizona with a mystical balm of haunting melodies, minor chords and tumbling beats that assure the audience we aren't in Manhattan anymore.
Truly there is more instrumental music than singing, it seems, often led with shimmering clarinet solos played by James Rana as Simon, a member of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra.
There is a definite plot to “The Band's Visit,” performed at a deliberate pace that often feels like every player on stage is listening to the same metronome.
The main characters are Colonel Tewfiq Zakaria (Sasson Gabay), leader of the seven-member orchestra in powder blue uniforms from Alexandria, Egypt, and Dina (Janet Dacal) the dispirited owner of the only café in the isolated, remote and nondescript village of Bet Hatikva, a fictional Israeli settlement whose uneventful past is as vacant as its future.
To get the story started, the Egyptian band is already in Tel Aviv headed for the suburban city of Petah Tikva, which is pronounced almost exactly like Bet Hatikva, especially if you are a bored ticket agent in Tel Aviv.
Sent to this backwater town by accident, with no luggage or accommodations, the band has no choice but to spend the night. While Dina and Tewfiq work on that problem, counterpart comedy is provided by Joe Joseph as Haled, the band's trumpet player who loves American jazz icon Chet Baker. His heartfelt playing of “My Funny Valentine” is balanced by his inability to resist every woman he happens to meet.
Haled at the local disco roller rink also finds himself the natural go-between bringing together a pair of extremely shy villagers who, up to that point, have only had enough courage to look at each other from a distance.
But the deepest, most tender moments are created in the conversations between Dina and Tewfiq once they discover a mutual love for old Egyptian films starring Omar Sharif. Love is not just for the young now, although the café owner and the Colonel come from very different lives.
Dina is particularly touching as she begins to see in Tewfiq the appreciation of a man with deeper sensibilities than what she gets from her usual customers.
Yet “The Band's Visit” eschews the extreme in every instance, offering instead the challenge to try a little tenderness, offering up a solution for the spirit, expressed with a sense of ancient Arabic understanding for human nature.
Performances are Friday, Feb. 25, at 8 p.m.; Saturday, Feb. 26, at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, Feb. 27, at 1 and 6:30 p.m., in Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd. Run time is 100 minutes with no intermission.
Tickets are $35-$125 through Ticketmaster.com All COVID protocols are in place. For COVID details broadwayintucson.com/shows
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