Broadway composer David Yazbek: ‘It’s about two disparate tribes connecting’

“I have a weird conflicted relationship with musical comedy or musicals. I don’t love them just by default.” This is perhaps a surprising thing to hear from a Tony-winning composer and lyricist of Broadway musicals, but David Yazbek — the man behind The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and soon-to-open The Band’s Visit — uses his ambivalence as a tool. “It takes me several months to decide [to do a show], unless it’s something that’s been eating at me. I have to make sure I want to live in that world and think I can add something.”

For The Band’s Visit, which tells the story of an Egyptian Arab police orchestra that gets lost on the way to a concert in Israel, rewatching Eran Kolirin’s award-winning 2007 Israeli film (which the show adapts) helped. “What really stuck with me was how I felt at the end. The characters are gently damaged and yet you feel sort of devastated and fulfilled. I thought, is there any way I can write this as a musical and have the same effect? And that’s what got me.”

Yazbek, who is wearing a crisp white T-shirt and thick black-framed glasses on our Zoom call (he’s in his studio just outside New York City), began his career as a comedy writer, working as part of chat-show host David Letterman’s team, for which he won an Emmy in 1984. He left to pursue his love of music and, as well as composing scores for TV shows and musicals, leads a rock band and has released five albums. Does his parallel career as a recording artist complement his musical theatre work? “Absolutely. When I teach masterclasses, I say that you must listen to everything and go beyond.”

The Band’s Visit, which has its European premiere at the Donmar Warehouse in London in September, is set in 1996, during one evening in an isolated, nondescript Israeli town in the Negev desert, where the lost band’s members pass time with the town’s residents, creating unexpected connections and emotional bonds. The original Broadway production, which opened in 2017, won 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book and, for Yazbek, Best Original Score. The London production is directed by Michael Longhurst, whose recent shows include Caroline, or Change and Bad Jews.

Much of the score draws on the Arabic classical tradition, as well as klezmer, while the lyrics reference the Persian poets Rumi and Hafez, the Bible and Buddhist teachings. It was important to Yazbek that the show featured an onstage band who could act and improvise musically. “That was exciting to me because it was new,” he says. “Usually in musical theatre, everything is about the timing, which has to be exact.”

Although the characters are Israelis and Egyptian Arabs, the conflict in the Middle East is consciously not addressed. “Itamar [Moses, the show’s book-writer] and I knew we weren’t going to have any flashbacks or war scenes. It could be about any two groups that have a history,” says Yazbek. “In the movie, there are little clues such as one moment when two of the Egyptians sit down in the café where there’s a little photo of a tank and one of them hangs his hat over it. It’s like the film-maker was saying: ‘This exists, no question, but we’re not going there.’”

Although you don’t think of it as a comedy, it is a very funny show. But what it’s really about is connection

Given that it is a quiet story with seemingly little incident and an absence of traditional big-cast song-and-dance numbers, what drove the show’s success? “There’s so much glitz that makes up for quality in musical theatre and, early on, Itamar and I knew we didn’t want to do that, even if the goal was Broadway. And, although you don’t think of it as a comedy, it is a very funny show. But what it’s really about is connection: these two disparate tribes connecting in very human, authentic ways.” 

Yazbek grew up in New York with a Lebanese father and a Sicilian half-Jewish mother in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Exposure to eclectic culture was on his doorstep: flamenco dancers and opera teachers lived in their building and, he says: “I could go into Central Park and hear Afro-Cuban music, klezmer and classical music.” As a child, he learnt the piano and cello, played in bands and has always been a voracious listener to “everything”.

He recalls first hearing Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum on the radio when he was seven years old on a trip to Lebanon with his father. “I have a strong memory of being in a cab listening to her voice with the windows open as it was hot, driving from Beirut up into the mountains where my grandfather had a house.” In the show, café owner Dina and band leader Tewfiq find a common bond through their love of Umm Kulthum and old Egyptian films, expressed in “Omar Sharif”, an evocative song in which Dina reminisces about the films and music from her childhood.

Yazbek is juggling several projects, including Dead Outlaw, a show that has obsessed him for 30 years, based on the true story of inept criminal Elmer McCurdy. He is also working on Whizz-Bang, “a big musical with a lot of science in it”. Yazbek says his involvement with the London production of The Band’s Visit is limited for now but he will probably fly out during later rehearsals.

“That’s where I have the most to offer. I just want to make sure the musicians feel like they’re having fun and let them know that, yes, these are my songs, but they don’t have to be precious about any given note — except maybe the few I tell them to be precious about because it will hurt if they’re not,” he says, smiling.

‘The Band’s Visit’ runs at the Donmar Warehouse, London, September 24-December 3, donmarwarehouse.com

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