After sweeping last year’s Tony Awards, The Band’s Visit is packing up and leaving Broadway this spring. The acclaimed musical, based on the film of the same name, will play its last performance April 7 at the Barrymore Theatre, making for a total of 589 performances plus 36 previews on Broadway. The musical’s plot follows the members of an Egyptian army band who get stranded in a small town in Israel. Its original Broadway cast included Katrina Lenk, Tony Shalhoub, and Ari’el Stachel, all of whom won Tonys for their performances, as did book writer Itamar Moses, composer David Yazbek, and director David Cromer. Shalhoub later left the production and was replaced by Sasson Gabay, who starred in the film.
The Band’s Visit recouped its $8.75 million capitalization in September 2018, making it the rare profitable Broadway production, and will start a national tour on June 25 in Rhode Island. In case you need a good emotional moment to process this news, Katrina Lenk herself will appear on The Tonight Show tonight, February 4, to perform her standout solo from the musical, “Omar Sharif.” We’re wistful and dreamy and melancholy and many other bittersweet adjectives just thinking about it.
