The small but beautiful production of The Band’s Visit gets an intimate staging at the Donmar Warehouse.  Its hands across the nations theme is one which had me open mouthed with wonderment and joy. As we arrive, a carousel of musical instrument cases and suitcases are revolving on the stage.  Later someone comments that we appear to be going round in circles!

An elegantly light blue uniformed group of men announce that they are the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra from Egypt and they have landed at Tel Aviv in Israel.  Their chief who is addressed as General because of his array of medals is Tewfiq (Alon Moni Aboutboul) a very formal gentleman with impeccable manners, who is their conductor.

Haled (Sharif Afifi)’s Egyptian accent at the bus station leads to a mistake in the name of the town they are going to. Instead of arriving at the Arabic Jewish Cultural Centre in Petah Tikva where the concert is to take place, they are in the centre of the Negev desert in a very small town called Bet Hatikva with poor transport links necessitating an overnight stay. The mistake is akin to going to Zambia when you were meant to arrive in Gambia, This desert area had a majority of Jewish settlers to Israel from North Africa, countries where Jews had learned to live alongside Arabs. So we are not looking at the Palestinian – Israeli conflict.  The song “Waiting” has lyrics referring to the tedium of living where they do. Dina (Miri Mesika), Itzik (Marc Antolin) and Papi (Harel Glazer) sing “Welcome to Nowhere”.