Broadway’s ‘The Band’s Visit’ Announces Closing Date

Broadway’s The Band’s Visit, winner of 10 Tony Awards last year, a commercial success and widely praised by critics, will play its final performance on Sunday, April 7, its producers said today.

“In a polarized and harsh world of politics and division, the success of The Band’s Visit has filled my heart with so much warmth, and I am so grateful to the theater community who has lifted our show to these heights,” lead producer Orin Wolf said (read his full statement below).

A national tour of the musical will launch June 25 in Providence, RI, followed by Washington, D.C.; Charlotte, NC; Chicago; Minneapolis; Baltimore; San Francisco; and Las Vegas, with more cities to be announced.

When the Broadway production closes April 7, it will have played 589 regular performances and 36 previews at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The production began October 7, 2017, and by the following September had recouped its $8.75 million capitalization.

Lead actress Katrina Lenk, one of the show’s Tony winners, will perform the song “Omar Sharif,” a signature number, tonight on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Other Tony wins were for Lead Actor (Tony Shalhoub), Featured Actor (Ari’el Stachel), Director (David Cromer), Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Book, Lighting Design, Sound Design and Orchestrations.

The Band’s Visit, based on the 2007 Israeli film, is a bittersweet, poignant and very funny musical that follows an Egyptian Police Band that, after a mixup at the border, mistakenly arrives at a remote village in the Israeli desert. As they wait for a bus to arrive the next day, the band members interact and bond with the locals, with hints of romance.

The musical, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book by Itamar Moses based on the screenplay by Eran Kolirin, premiered Off Broadway in 2016 at the Atlantic Theater Company. The production opened at Broadway’s Barrymore on Nov. 9, 2017.

Here is producer Wolf’s full statement on the show and its closing:

A year ago, I was asked if I believed The Band’s Visit was commercial. My answer then was, ‘I don’t know. But I want to live in a world where it is.’ How extraordinary to be sitting on the other side of that year, looking back and celebrating the unimaginable and unanimously beautifully written reviews, a historic 10 Tony Awards and perhaps most astonishingly, a profitable two season run on Broadway. In a polarized and harsh world of politics and division, the success of The Band’s Visit has filled my heart with so much warmth and I am so grateful to the theater community who has lifted our show to these heights. It will be a pleasure to share this story with the entire country when the national tour begins on June 25th, 2019.