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The Bands Visitruns 90 minutes.
It doesnt have an intermission.
It doesnt have an 11 oclock number, partly because it doesnt have a second act.
TheBroadway musical adapted from the 2007 Israeli indie filmeschews flash and theatrics in favor of subtlety and silence.
What itdoeshave though is Omar Sharif, a quietly gorgeous number that happens almost exactly halfway through the show.
Dina has been trying, fruitlessly, to connect with the bands leader, Tewfiq, all evening.
From Screen to Stage
Itamar Moses:I wrote the first draft essentially as a play.
What are the things about the movie that do sustain onstage?
And what do I have to change and how?
But this was clearly a moment that could be musicalized.
But that one it just stuck.
Yazbek:Then I dont hear from him for three months!
Moses:That is true.
Im gonna think about that.
Yazbek:Yeah, then Ill hang up because Ill want to go write something.
I dont understand how peopledontwork that way.
Its sort of stream-of-consciousness.
It mentions Cleopatra, who ended up being up in the song.
Yazbek:If he has the word Cleopatra in there, then Boom!
That really leads right in to a potential lyric.
And if we have Cleopatra … who would Omar Sharif be?
Probably like a desert thief on a horse or something.
Arab movies, Egyptian movies.
And every Friday at noon, all the street in Israel was empty because Arab movie every Friday afternoon.
We were all in love with Omar Sharif.
We were all in love with love.
And perhaps she goes on to express something like:
The feelings were so big, so unashamed.
Everything mattered so much.
Not like our lives in this little town where nothing important happened ever.
It felt like how the world was supposed to be, how we all wanted our future to be.
To turn you into Cleopatra.
You meet a man and you want him so much to be that.
Probably thats what tricked me when I met my husband.
I thought I was in a movie.
But life isnt a movie.
And they dont show arab movie so much on TV here anymore.
But when I was young I could believe in love because of those movies and because of Omar Sharif.
Email from Yazbek to Moses, July 29, 2014:
This is great.
Its going to be a great song.
An Un-Broadway Broadway Number
Cromer:The very first words are Umm Kulthum and Omar Sharif.
So that …
Yazbek:That gets you somewhere!
Yazbek:Its a more Western song than youd think.
There was something about all of that it suggested, I believe, this chord movement.
The two first chords and maybe the next two those four.
Which makes the song sound less Western.
Its a waltz, too.
Yazbek:At one point somebody said something like, These songs are too poetic!
Do you remember that?
Moses:I must have blocked it out.
Yazbek:And Im like, Did you see the movie?
Are you reading what Itamars writing?
That and the jasmine thing.
Or you’re able to do that because youre getting paid to do a master class.
But the truth is a lot of it is about a frame of reference, taste, experience.
Yazbek:I wrote the bridge kind of late in the process.
The bridge is the part where she starts singing, And the living room becomes a garden.
But people sometimes think that means like, Theyll sing a song while they rob a bank!
Action can be all kinds of things.
So were like, Theyre sitting at a table in a cafeteria, whats the event of the song?
The lyric of the bridge might have come out of that.
Lenk:We talked for a while about, should it be a TV set or a radio.
Its such a boxy sounding word.
Moses:Were in scene seven and he hasnt sung yet!
We want to hear Tewfiq.
Hes falling in love with her.
Cromer:There is conventional wisdom that says, Well, shes singing quite a bit.
And we had to spread the wealth.
This is what youre supposed to do in a show.
And thats always dangerous thinking.
And I wrote a song.
Cromer:AndOmar Sharif was cut.
That was before I was on the show.
Yazbek:It was gone for a long time, at least six months.
I was thinking this might be one of the best songs Ive ever written.
Cromer:Meaning cut the song.
Yazbek: But it was against every instinct I had.
Moses:Cromer came in, and said, Well, I want to understand this.
I want to understand how we got to this point.
Show me songs that were cut.
I feel very strongly about it.
I really, really want to put it back in the show.
Yazbek: Ha I dont remember that.
There was beautiful choreography that Patrick [McCollum] created.
But it wasnt, and I had to kill it.
Ill forgive myself by saying it was in service of the lift of the song.
Yazbek:Ive seen Katrina sing that song in Barnes & Noble on their little stage.
Ive seen her sing it with my band in a cabaret setting.
Ive sung it in clubs and the lyrics take you to the place you gotta go.
It turns out you dont really need stage magic to help.
She is attempting to find something to talk about with him.
She wants to talk.
I love a scene with fluorescent lights, where people are eating a sandwich.
Yazbek:In the conversation, she wouldnt be waxing so poetically.
More than get away with it.
You set the rules for the show.
Its the first song, I think, that really sets the rules for the show.
Theres a war between me and some cucumber happening.
He says, Not everyone feels like you.
Yazbek:Its a connection.
If Im sitting in that chair at that table, Im falling in love with her.
Cromer:The thing that we take some pride in is that she just stays in the chair.
Lenk:Its really an unusual thing to just sing a whole song while youre sitting.
It instantly makes you feel relaxed when youre sitting.
Also, in heels, its hard to sometimes feel grounded.
Cromer:We always wanted the thing to flow.
That song certainly floats by its very nature.
You dont need much beyond her just staying in the chair.
But it was everyones ego was in the backseat to the song.
So youre almost not meant to see it.
Youre only meant to feel it.
Lenk:Yazbek and Cromer were very respectful of me finding those things out and discovering things in rehearsal.
Like theres feathers under your skin or youre moving your hand from your back rather than from your hand.
Theres all these very specific sensory tasks.
Just for a second.
In this quite big theater.
Yazbek:And thats something that you could literally see falling in love with: a hand gesture.
So it became to me the heart of the thing.
Moses:In a way the song is the centerpiece of the whole show, and the sceneisthe gesture.
Its like a fractal, and you zoom in smaller and smaller.
The DNA of the whole show is somehow in Omar Sharif.
Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
