The Band's Visit
Paperback, 96 pages ISBN: 9781559365864Publication Date:
8 Nov 2018
Size: 215mm x 135mm£18.99
First Staged:
Off-Broadway, 2016; Broadway, 2017

The Band's Visit

By David Yazbek and Itamar Moses

Paperback £18.99

  • Best Book of a Musical, Tony Awards - 2018
  • Best Musical, Tony Awards - 2018
  • Best Original Score, Tony Awards - 2018

After a mix-up at the border, Egypt’s Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, bound for the cosmopolitan Israeli city Petah Tikvah, is stranded in a small desert town. With no transportation until the next day, the band is taken in by the locals. By morning, the lives of visitors and hosts are forever altered.

The Band's Visit finds transcendence in the surprising and tender relationships that are forged between strangers under the desert sky.

The Band's Visit is a musical with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book by Itamar Moses, based on the 2007 Israeli film of the same name, written by Eran Kolirin. 

The musical premiered Off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2016, and on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 2017. It won ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical.

Press Quotes

'It's time to fall in love again… One of the most ravishing musicals you will ever be seduced by… The Band’s Visit is a Broadway rarity seldom found these days outside of the canon of Stephen Sondheim… Miraculous'

Ben Brantley - New York Times

'Quietly ravishing… It is unlike any musical I've seen - understated, with a dry wit and a yearning soul'

Vogue

'Book writer Itamar Moses and composer/lyricist David Yazbek have created a play of deep integrity - funny, generous, sweet without sentimentality, poignant without melodrama, and emotionally expansive… The Band’s Visit is quietly modeling real theatrical and musical courage… It gave me more hope for what Broadway might welcome, might foster, might become than any musical in a long time. It's a deceptively radical jasmine wind blowing through a stuffy room, bringing with it the possibility of change'

New York Magazine

'A small show with a big heart... a wondrous encounter of cultures and personality... a snapshot of open-hearted hospitality and boundless joie de vivre... Each character is perfectly crafted... Even the smaller storylines leave an enormous mark... a well-rounded, stereotype-free, wholesome piece of theatre... It's simply sublime, mandatory viewing for a lesson on empathy, kindness, and the power of music'

Broadway World

'Entrancing... Every conversation prises a lid off complex emotion, probes at tender places... thrilling'

Guardian

'A magical, bijou musical to send the soul soaring... has a concentrated Chekhovian depth and melancholy... Droll social comedy combines with exquisite everyday misery... immaculately observed... quiet and simple, yes, but it's precisely that alchemy that makes it special'

Telegraph

'Irresistible... witty and delightfully odd... utterly charming'

Evening Standard

'Bittersweet and idiosyncratic... a beautiful, haunting work about loss, loneliness and the desire for human warmth'

Time Out

'Exquisite... sumptuous vignettes of small-town love, loss and longing... the most powerful reminder possible that the greatest art is always rooted in the smallest and most specific details'

iNews
Paperback,96 pages ISBN: 9781559365864Publication Date:
8 Nov 2018
Size: 215mm x 135mm£18.99
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