With my annual pilgrimage to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival foiled by a series of wildfires burning across the Oregon/California border, I turned tail on the tarmac and headed to New York City with tickets to the current and future hits of Broadway — as well as a more obscure, immersive theatrical experience.
New York is to theater what Los Angeles is to the film industry — and of late, there’s been heavy crossover between stage and screen. The 2017-18 season’s Tony nominees for new works were dominated by shows based on books, films, and television, a theme prevalent throughout the shows I experienced. The Band’s Visit, the current Tony winner for Best Musical, began as a 2007 Israeli film; Be More Chill, a teen-centric, off-Broadway show with a zealous cult following, took its concept from Ned Vizzini’s novel of the same name; even Third Rail Projects’ experiential dance-theater odyssey, the “curiouser and curiouser” haunted-asylum adventure of Then She Fell, took inspiration from the writings of Lewis Carroll — including personal, intimate entries to his “muse,” the young (pre-teen) Alice Liddell.
As a Tony winner, a touring production of The Band’s Visit will certainly play in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the coming years. A dreamy exploration of loneliness and the solace of even fleeting connection, the musical follows an Egyptian ceremonial police orchestra, that, via folly of language-barrier miscommunication, ends up in the desert pit-stop of Bet Hatikva instead of their intended concert destination, the Israeli cultural hub of Petah Tikva.