Right after I got home from The Band’s Visit, I actually had to tell my friend about it and how much I enjoyed it. This is what I wrote to him:
“… A group of older Egyptian men in a band are visiting Israel, but they miss their bus to the hotel, so an Israeli woman and her co-workers from a cafe allow them to spend the evening with them. They go on all of these adventures: to a diner, a rollerskating rink, a park, the co-workers’ homes to sleep for the night. But through all of it, they all bond from learning about each other’s lives before the men leave just the next morning — But the funniest thing is that every 15 minutes or so we would come back to a man who’s at a payphone for THE ENTIRE PLAY waiting for his girlfriend to call him back (and he ended up being the best singer out of all of them, almost flawless in my opinion).”
To detail this further, I think that this play communicated many messages of positivity – from people with language barriers and unfamiliarity with each other’s places of origins becoming very close and open with one another in a matter of hours, to the feeling of hope that was conveyed by the translated phone call at the end of the show!
Overall, I really enjoyed this rendition of a somewhat underwhelming movie – I know some people also pointed out that the accents were inaccurate, but I was really entertained! There was a lot of humor, but a lot of moving moments as well. All in all, It was an all-around, heartwarming show.