A Visit to a Mean and Frozen SpongeBob

June 10 is date of 2018’s Tony Awards ceremony, Broadway’s answer to the Oscars. As usual  Hollywood will doubtless gets its due. Such familiar TV and movie folks as Amy Schumer, Andrew Garfield, Tony Shalhoub, Michael Cera, and Denzel Washington (who’s earned raves for a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s classic The Iceman Cometh) all earned acting nominations. But I was especially struck by the entries in the Best Musical category. Though the musical revivals being honored this year (My Fair Lady, Carousel, Once On This Island) all began life on a stage, every single new musical on the 2018 list of nominees is an adaptation of a film property. It feels as though no one dares to launch a musical these days unless its basic premise and characters have been vetted by movie audiences. Given the cost of putting on a Broadway musical, I guess that makes some sort of sense. But for those who love discovering new musical stories, it’s disheartening that originality seems to be dead.

So what are these candidates for Best New Musical? Inevitably, there’s a stage adaptation of the Disney mega-hit, Frozen, with writer/lyricists Kristin Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez enhancing their Oscar-winning film score (“Let it Go”) with additional songs. In recent years, Disney has added to its coffers by turning its film successes into Broadway extravaganzas (see The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, etc. etc.), and so a stage version of Frozen—a story beloved by little girls everywhere—was an easy sell. Surprisingly, Frozen will not be a big winner on Tony night. It is only nominated in three categories.

A very different kind of film adaptation is up for 11 awards. This is The Band’s Visit, a stage adaptation of a small, charming Israeli film about an Egyptian troupe of amateur musicians who find themselves stuck in a small desert town in the Negev, reliant on the hospitality of Israeli locals. The good-hearted film hints at the power of music, which gives its transformation into a stage musical a kind of artistic logic. Serious Broadway pros are involved on the production end, and critics feel this is a class act – and the show to beat. 

But wait! Two other new musicals have racked up 12 nominations apiece. Decidedly NOT good-hearted is Tina Fey’s stage adaptation of her own 2004 hit, Mean Girls. I’m told the musical, like the film, has a wonderful sardonic edge, as well as a point to make: both are based on Fey’s reading of a genuine how-to book, Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boys, and the New Realities of Girl World. Like most things Fey touches, this show is golden, and could well take home the top prize. (Its lyricist, Neil Benjamin, was responsible for both music and lyrics on what might be the epitome of the movie-to-Broadway musical, the perky and forgettable Legally Blonde.)

And, yes, there’s SpongeBob SquarePants, a big-budget musical that borrows characters and settings from the Nickelodeon cartoon series, which itself became a 2015 film. The always acerbic L.A. Times drama critic calls SpongeBob a play “spun from pop cultural pabulum.” And there’s no question that a show about the happy denizens of Bikini Bottom is going to be bright and cheerful, instead of intellectually challenging, Still, it obviously has its partisans.

But as someone with a close relative who hopes to make his career writing musical theatre, I trust there’s still room for projects unconnected to movies past and present. Here’s hoping audiences can still be surprised and delighted by a brand-new stage experience.

Revisiting “The Band’s Visit”: Musicians Without Borders

With the U.S. debating the terms on which foreign visitors can enter the country and Washington D.C. making an apparent shift in its policy toward Israel and Palestine, I sat down to watch a ten-year-old Israeli film called The Band’s Visit. It, like so many of our news stories of late, focuses on what happens to those who cross international borders. The Band’s Visit tells the fictive story of a small Egyptian band, officially the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra. The eight men, in their elaborate formal uniforms, fly to Tel Aviv for a cultural exchange, but get far more than they bargained for. I’d long heard of this film, but  didn’t anticipate that it is less a political statement or a satire of bungling bureaucracy than a gentle reminder that people are people, no matter their point of origin.

The film begins with a prime example of cross-cultural misunderstanding. After its arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, the proud little band discovers there’s no liaison present to smooth its way to its performance venue. One band member, the group’s foremost Romeo, is delegated to inquire at an airport information desk. Speaking in mangled English, he asks the Israeli receptionist about transportation options. The men end up on a public bus that drops them at a town in the middle of nowhere. Yes, this is Beit Hatikva, but no one is expecting the band’s arrival. Eventually, the problem becomes clear. Arabic languages lack a “P” sound, and regularly substitute a “B.” The bandsman apparently inquiring about Beit Hatikva (“House of Hope”) actually needed directions to Petah Tikva (“Opening of Hope”), a well-established industrial city just outside of Tel Aviv. 

Anyway, it’s almost nightfall, and the men are going to need food and a place to sleep. The denizens of Beit Hatikva are a hard-scrabble bunch, most of them marked by dreams that have gone awry. But, led by the big-hearted Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) who owns the seedy local café, they open their own homes to the band members. The film cuts between several of these home-stays, which variously include an amusing trip to a roller-skating rink, an awkward dinner with a deeply stressed young married couple, and a revealing conversation between the proud but sad leader of the troupe and the earthy Dina, who feels she has squandered her own chances for happiness. Nothing earth-shattering happens, but before the night is out everyone knows everyone a bit better. And just a small amount of magic has made some drab  lives slightly more endurable.

Then comes morning, and the eight musicians set off for their proper destination, where their mutual love of music is at last on full display.

The Band’s Visit, a popular film both in Israel and abroad, was selected to represent Israel in the competition for the 2008 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. One problem, though: in the interest of realism, the Egyptian characters speak Arabic together, while the Israelis speak Hebrew. When members of the two groups need to communicate across national lines, English is their lingua franca. Since more than 50% of the film’s dialogue is in English, the Academy disqualified it from the Foreign Language Film category. A shame, truly.

Less shame than tragedy is the death in 2016 of the beautiful and soulful actress Ronit Elkabetz, who succumbed to cancer at age 51. The star of many Israeli films, she last played the very different role of an Orthodox Jewish wife denied a divorce by her husband in 2014’s Gett: The Trial of Viviane Ansalem.  She also co-wrote and co-directed. Her passing is a huge loss.