The Band’s Visit at Golden Gate Theatre

The Band’s Visit comes to Golden Gate Theatre. Come along to watch it and be transported around the world to the small town of Bet Hatikva in Isreal. A town so small you won’t find it on a map, a place even the locals call nowhere! Under the desert sky, with beautiful music perfuming the air, the band arrives and brings the town to life, laugh along with the villagers as the Band realize that they are stranded in the middle of nowhere, fall in love with the characters as the story unfolds, cry at the realization that this simple town will never be the same again in the morning and The Band must leave.

The Band’s Visit Tickets

“THE BEST MUSICAL ON BROADWAY! Beautiful music, beautiful story, beautiful acting.” – Peter Marks, The Washington Post.

“The uncanny virtuosity of Mr. Yazbek’s score feels as essential as oxygen!” – Ben Brantley, The New York Times.

“Breaking news for Broadway: IT IS TIME TO FALL IN LOVE AGAIN! One of the most ravishing musicals you will ever be seduced by. It is called ‘THE BAND’S VISIT’.” – Ben Brantley, The New York Times.

“This show gave me more hope for what Broadway might welcome, might foster, might become, than any musical in a long time.” – Sara Holdren, New York Magazine

A simple misunderstanding, a slight error in translation is all that this story hinges upon. In the midst of his attempts to flirt with the ticket girl using his limited English, Haled, played by Joe Joseph, confuses the destinations of “Petah Tikvah” and “Bet Hatikva,” buying tickets for the wrong destination. The Band are The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, led by Tewfiq, played by Sasson Gabay, and were supposed to be going to Petah Tikvah to play in the cultural concert. Bet Hatikva’s inauspicious creation is described by Dina, played by Chilina Kennedy, the café owner as pouring “cement on a spot in the desert.” The townspeople believe their dull and blasé town is “nowhere.” With no bus arriving till the following day The Band have no choice but to remain in Bet Hatikva for the night, and so they stay, playing and dancing with the townspeople who come out for the night. The lovers coming on dates, the family sitting with their children and the lonely guy waiting at the pay phone for his girlfriend to call. They all have a story to share and The Band touches all their lives in different ways and, I think, in the end are left better for their misadventure in nowhere.

Featuring some unique middle eastern musical instruments, for instance the Oud and the Darbuka. The Oud is a pear shaped stringed musical instrument, much like a guitar, that is one of the most popular instruments in Middle Eastern music. The front of the instrument is flat and often intricately carved while the back of the instrument is rounded and covered with thin strips of wood. It is from these thin strips that the instrument is thought to derive its name from the Arabic word for “wood.” The oud is most commonly strung with 11 strings, 10 of which are paired, stretched over its fretless neck to its peg box which is bent back at an angle. The Darbuka also called “doumbek” or “derbeki,” is a goblet-shaped drum with a distinctive sound popular in Middle Eastern music. Traditionally the Darbuka was made of clay with goat skin stretched over the top. The drum is usually played by placing the instrument on the knee and utilizing a variety of hand movements to produce a range of sounds in complex rhythms. There are many different varieties of this type of drum throughout the world.
The Band’s Visit was the winner of 10 Tony Awards, including the 2018 Tony award for best Musical!, making it one of the most Tony-winning musicals in history. It was also the 2019 Grammy Awards winner for Best Musical Theater Album. Its off-Broadway production won several major awards, including the 2017 Obie Award for Musical Theatre, as well the year’s New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical. The Band’s Visit is one of four musicals in Broadway history to win the unofficial “Big Six” Tony Awards, which include Best Musical, Best Book, Best Score, Best Actor in a Musical, Best Actress in a Musical, and Best Direction of 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.

“The Band’s Visit, scored by David Yazbek, penned by Itamar Moses, directed by David Cromer and closely based on Eran Kolirin’s relatively obscure Israeli film from 2007, is that this character, this Dina, lies. It was important. It is important. It has to be important. Why? Well, this is the rare musical that understands that although the international enmity that dominates our tawdry collective time on this planet mostly is cultural, most of us actually live in towns with hardly any culture at all. So. The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, run by Tewfig and looking like something from Monty Python, takes a wrong turn to the wrong Israeli town, a place that not only lacks an Arab cultural center, but also an Israeli culture center (you see the show’s thesis). Tewfig finds himself in a cafe run by Dina, and you feel Yazbek’s score dangle, formatively and emotionally, the chance of romance or at least a fling. But you quickly see there is so much in the way. Soon, the strangers in the night are singing not about changing glances, but about confusion, impediment and the total inability of the one to know the other. You see the whole band rattling around the town: a place where a young guy sits by a pay phone hoping a girl will call, or a couple tend to their baby and try to hold it together, just like a family in New Jersey. For some, it will seem like a strange and esoteric Broadway musical, which is not wrong. There is no mention of any macro Arab-Israeli conflict whatsoever. No need. This is a remarkable and boundlessly compassionate and humanistic piece of theater. It lets us know that that is as absurd an enmity as all the other things about which we fight.” – Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune.