‘Nothing is as beautiful as something you didn’t expect.” That’s the story of this 2016 musical, and also its entrancing effect. Based on a 2007 Israeli film about an unplanned encounter between Egyptian musicians and the people of an Israeli backwater, the musical is a charmer about lives changed in the quietest of ways.
We first see a luggage carousel, and a clutch of men in incongruous powder blue uniforms. This is the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, booked for a prestigious gig in the city of Petah Tikvah. A mid-flirt mistake at the ticket office lands them in Bet Hatikva, a nowhere town in the Negev desert, “basically bleak and beige and blah blah blah”. It’s a place where nothing happens, every day.
The bus to the city doesn’t leave until tomorrow, so the musicians bed down around town. And that’s it, that’s the plot. We follow characters through a long warm evening – from a fractious family apartment to the local roller disco and a poor excuse for a park. Everything here is unfinished business: neglected ambitions, an incomplete concerto, a never-ringing payphone. Even Soutra Gilmour’s set is backed by tiers of bricks from an abandoned building project. At least the band has somewhere to sit.
And it’s music that drives the show forward, nudging the characters’ anxious minds and clouded hearts. With its klezmatic clarinet, emphatic oud and a flute like a desolate wind, it’s thrilling to hear the band’s squall and rumble. David Yazbek’s Tony-winning score begins in twitchy languor – the sigh of a place where nothing happens, the fret of wishing it would – then deepens, cradling songs of desire and disappointment.
If there is a central thread in this ensemble show, it’s the near-romance between Tewfiq and Dina, the gruff conductor and the local cafe owner. Alon Moni Aboutboul’s Tewfiq hides behind his peaked cap and mournful courtesy. As the night unrolls, he demonstrates the conductor’s art in a delicate hand ballet and scrapes the rust off his voice in lilting Arabic song.
Dina is smart, disillusioned and ragingly unfulfilled – we don’t know exactly how she feels about her ex-husband, but the decisive way she carves up a watermelon gives an idea. In a stunning performance by Israeli performer Miri Mesika, each song reveals new textures in her voice, from sardonic iron to yearning velvet. The standout number has her sink into the memory of watching Omar Sharif’s romantic movies, “floating in on a jasmine wind”.
Scenes in Itamar Moses’s tangy script often end too soon – they scarper at a song’s close rather than linger with a situation. Both hosts and visitors know each other too well, but encounters with strangers mean that people must explain themselves. Every conversation prises a lid off complex emotion, probes at tender places.
Even scene changes thrum with character in Michael Longhurst’s open-hearted production. I loved spending time with his poker-faced cast, masters of shrug and eye roll. They include Michal Horowicz’s miserable wife, too worn down to sing, Marc Antolin’s drifting manboy, Sargon Yelda’s attentive composer and Ashley Margolis, waiting by the phone like a lonesome muppet.
The smallest things can lift them. A doleful waiter (Harel Glazer), easily panicked by women, gets romantic advice at the roller disco. A tearful baby is soothed by a clarinet lullaby. This unexpected night may not change lives forever – but it helps people face a new day.
At the Donmar Warehouse, London, until 3 December
