This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: There are few modern musicals that I appreciate more than THE BAND'S VISIT. I think it is gorgeous and it also reveals a huge blind spot for me as a human being. So I'm going to need you a lot for this episode because I read and re-read the synopsis over again to try and remember everyone's name and maybe try and figure out like literally to prepare for this episode, I was googling things like, do Israel and Egypt like each other? Like, you know, like there's there's so many things that I just don't know. And this musical reveals it and it does so in such a beautiful way that I couldn't be more grateful for it.

[0:47] Marc Ginsburg: I agree. And just to just to piggyback on the names thing, they don't help you out either, because there are a great many characters in this show where they have names, there are names in the script, there's names in the program, and the names are never revealed through the show. They never say Simone's name. They never say Anna's name. They never say. What's his face? And now I've forgotten the father.

[1:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, like the father-in-law?

[1:15] Marc Ginsburg: Yes. Who I understudy. Now I can't even think of his name. Oh, my God. So I'm so out of it right now. But they never say his name. Wait, you understudy the father-in-law. His name is Avram. Let me just get that out there. Avram. Avram. There you go. They never say his name. So they don't help you with that. But when I got the offer, it was so nice. You know, I got my offer. I'm reading my contract. And in it, it says understudy Avram. And I went, well, that can't be right. That's very nice. But that can't be right. So I wrote back to my agent. I said, hey, I think they made a mistake. And he wrote back and said, no, that's what they want. And I did it. I got to rehearse a lead supporting character with a great Cromer and Patrick McCallum with a great song and Andrea Grody and with David Yazbek watching. So I dang I haven't gone on. I don't know if I ever will, but I appreciate the fact that I got to be a part of that process, at least for a little bit.

[2:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome, everybody, to A Musical Theatre Podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theater history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff. Today, we're talking about THE BAND'S VISIT and to discuss it with me is Mr. Marc Ginsburg. Hey, Marc.

[2:46] Marc Ginsburg: Hello, my friend. How are you? I'm so grateful that you're here. I'm seriously thrilled to be here. And I will reiterate that you did not invite me. I invited myself. I asked you if I could be on this show because for the love of God, I just want to talk musical theater for a little bit. I've been missing it. So it breaks my heart that we're like 15 minutes away from each other, but like this is as close as we can get. But in our respective closets, doing this conversation, I love that you've created this like lighting situation for yourself where there's a nice. What is it called when you have the lights on the sides? What is that like?

[3:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Lights on the sides, right?

[3:29] Marc Ginsburg: This is why I'm not a lighting designer in lighting design. Oh, yeah. In the technical world, that's what we call it. Lights on the side. They are so beautiful and moody, but make it impossible to dance.

[3:37] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Always my favorite is when you've been dancing in the brightest lights and then instant blackout, not fade to black, but instant blackout. And then they say, good, get off stage as quickly as you can. You just go. There's no tape. Dear Lord, go right. But I'm sure you'll be fine.

[3:52] Marc Ginsburg: It's so true. You have this gorgeous beard right now.

[3:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Thank you. How long have you had it?

[4:02] Marc Ginsburg: Whenever it was the last time I shaved for the show. So if we closed on a Thursday, I probably shaved on Tuesday, March 10th, I guess that would be. And after that, I just said, you know what? I don't want to shave. I don't feel like it. So I'm just not going to do it. And we'll see how long that goes. We were off the road for a little while, so I don't know if it'll go this whole time. But right now I'm enjoying it.

[4:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Spoiler alert, you are in the national tour of THE BAND'S VISIT, the first national tour. And of course, that tour has been cut short. We don't know when you're going to go back out on the road. I hope it's soon, because the whole country deserves to see this amazing show, including myself. I want to really see it. And you guys were supposed to come to L.A., right?

[4:40] Marc Ginsburg: We were supposed to be here, I believe, in July. We were going to be here for three weeks. I was so looking forward to it, to having so many friends experience it and come see the show and to see them. I haven't seen friends in so long. And right. Fingers crossed. I know that we have been told that they are one million percent committed to getting this show back on the road whenever it is humanly possible. We have no idea when that will be. We had a couple tentative back to work dates that clearly are not going to work with the way things are going. And we don't have another one as of now, but I know that they're working night and day on it, of course, especially because the producers of the show networks are headed by the president, Oren Wolf, who is our lead producer and who brought this show into being.

He was the one who literally watched this movie, said this would make a great musical and I want to produce it. So this is his baby from second one. And he is still committed to getting us back out. And we could not possibly be more grateful for that.

[5:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: How cool. It's such an unusual show in every sense of the word.

[5:58] Marc Ginsburg: Number one, I think because of its honesty. Yeah. It also dares to be really quiet and still. Oh, yeah. And then also incredibly celebratory. It just hits this like this tone that I've never really experienced before in a show. And the more I experience it, the more I love it.

[6:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I agree. And I'll I'm sure we'll get to this as we go along, but I will just go out and say off the bat, so much of that has to do with David Cromer, who is our Tony-winning director. You know, he did, as you know, Adding Machine and the acclaimed revival of Our Town that was off-Broadway for a while. I mean, this guy, I would walk to the ends of the earth to work with David Cromer again because he's brilliant and he's not afraid of taking chances and challenging performers and challenging the audience. And from the beginning, he said, I'm going to do something that is done very sparingly these days, because, you know, you have a however much it costs, five, 10, 15 million dollar production with people paying 150 bucks a pop to go to the theater and you don't want them sitting there going, why is it so quiet? Why are they not saying anything? But he dares them.

[7:40] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah, it's crazy. And he dared them to, as he puts it, to lean in and to really lean forward and just embrace the discomfort and embrace the silence and be in the world with these people instead of going, you know, when's the tap number coming up? What's going on? And the fact that he was brave enough and the fact that obviously the powers that be gave him the license to do that speaks leaps and volumes to the production itself, to the collaborative process and to his particular brand of genius.

[7:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's awesome. I think that I can often be a little critical of the politics and culture of critique. How about that? I could be critical of critique. Wow. What a stance, Parsons. That being said, in the case of THE BAND'S VISIT, which, you know, won every Tony award that it possibly could have—ten to be precise, which is incredible. I think it's one of the few musicals that have won, quote unquote, the big six. Right. It won best musical, best leading actor, best leading actress, best director, best score, best book. Correct. All six of them. Boom. Snatched them up, took them home. And like I said, while I can be critical of the politics behind all of those sorts of things, I think that THE BAND'S VISIT is a great example of how important awards and reviews can be, because I'm not entirely sure that it would have been a smash, that it would have gotten a first national tour with incredible artists like yourself if it hadn't been so lauded and praised by reviewers and, you know, swept up all of them trophies.

[9:02] Marc Ginsburg: I hate to say it that way, but you're completely right, because let's be honest, we're taking this little show. Everywhere we went, we were being surrounded by Betty Buckley and Hello, Dolly! and the new Cats and this and Hamilton. You know, we were following Hamilton all over the place and Aladdin. And these are huge, big-name shows. I'm not saying they're not good productions, but clearly the name has this whole brand, right? It's got a whole brand. It's got the whole thing. But the fact that I think there was a little bit of mystery around us, first of all, helped because people were going, I wonder what this is. This seems interesting. But then looking and saying, oh, well, it won 10 Tony Awards and, you know, it's got great reviews.

So it's mysterious and people seem to like it. So I'll give it a shot. And I think that gets them into the theater. And I think they leave like they found a diamond in the rough, as it were. You know, they discovered it in Greenville, South Carolina. They said, oh, we had no idea. But now we know and we can spread the word to people.

[10:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And I'm glad that they do. Like they take ownership of it. Like this is our show now, too.

[10:12] Marc Ginsburg: I do think there's some ownership to that. That's beautiful. I think that's wonderful. I think that's the power of art for sure. I would say that the same phenomenon happens in movies all the time where I don't think Parasite would have ever come across my personal plate if it hadn't been getting awards buzz. So I know that there are politics and things to explore within those different systems. But at the same time, it is incredibly important to getting the product out. And when you do have a piece like THE BAND'S VISIT that I think has benefited from it, it makes me very grateful.

[10:53] Marc Ginsburg: Me too. Obviously. Very grateful. Yeah. Thank you. Health insurance. Right.

[11:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, THE BAND'S VISIT. The musical is based on the film from 2007, which was an Israeli film. And I haven't seen the film, I assume. Have you?

[11:08] Marc Ginsburg: Oh, yes. I love the film. I venture to say. And if anybody's listening, sorry, Yazbek, but there's part of me that loves the film even more than the show.

[11:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, wow.

[11:20] Marc Ginsburg: So beautifully shot and acted. The only thing I know about it and going back to awards politics, it was a very, you know, praised film. And yet when they submitted it to be considered for best foreign film, it was rejected because it has so much English and too much English.

[11:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yep.

[11:40] Marc Ginsburg: Which is so interesting because the only reason that these characters are speaking English to each other is because they don't speak each other's language. Right. So they would rather speak English poorly because at least maybe they have that in common. That's right. Which is so international in and of itself. The idea that that would disqualify it from being a foreign film blows my mind.

[11:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Isn't it interesting?

[12:04] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah. So it wasn't able to be nominated for that award for anything, really. But yeah. So then cue your producer and remind me of his name again.

[12:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oren Wolf. And he's in love with the film and decides to take it on as his project.

[12:17] Marc Ginsburg: Correct. And contacts David Yazbek, who is an amazing composer. Is that true or am I making that up?

[12:22] Marc Ginsburg: That is what you would assume would happen, but it actually didn't quite happen that way. One of our company members who's an actor, singer, he's an actor, he's a singer. He plays in the show, the oud, the guitar, the darbuka, which is a kind of drum. And he's the Arab dialect coach. His name is Ronnie Malley. He's a true renaissance man. He was part of the early process of this way back in the day. And he was telling me a story about how they really went back old school with this and auditioned composers to.

[12:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, like Hello, Dolly.

[12:57] Marc Ginsburg: Exactly. It all comes back to Jerry Herman. But yeah, it's making all of these composers audition. That's interesting. They had people audition. And, you know, so there were some really talented composers coming in, but obviously this is a very, very specific type of music we're talking about. And he said that there was someone who came in and played beautiful music and played it on a bouzouki, which for those who don't know, it's a Greek instrument, which has a very specific sound to it. It's a beautiful sound, but you listen to it and they said, man, this is really nice music. But Greece is not the Middle East. And it just it wouldn't it just would not work. It would be like playing Oklahoma with a ukulele. It's just I'm sure the music would be beautiful, but it just doesn't evoke the right feeling. By the way, I want that cast album. I want to write the Pacific Islander version of Oklahoma. That sounds just it just came to me. I'm casting it in my head.

[14:00] Marc Ginsburg: Eventually, they landed on David Yazbek. Many people know that he is a big-time musical theatre composer. Who would have thought? His father is Lebanese. I believe his mother is Jewish. So he came in and apparently he started playing this music and just blew everyone away. And the score is astonishing. I would go on to say that it is unlike any score that has ever been written before for mainstream musical theatre. It fills squarely a part of the art form and even has hallmarks of himself as an artist. You hear it and you're like, oh, that's totally David Yazbek. But then he also has this amazing orchestrator that's creating this sound that you've never experienced in a musical. This is not to discredit anything else in the show, but every time we talk to people and they say, oh, we love the show.

It was so wonderful. And we say, yeah, thank you. We really love it. And they say the music was unbelievable. It transfixes people. It's so rich and so new and rooted in so much history and so much personal love. And the great part is it's all played live on stage, which is amazing. The members of the band in the show are actors and none of them are actors. All of those people that are in uniform and in costume on stage have never acted before in their lives before this show. And they do and they do it wonderfully. And they play every note of that music on stage. And if they don't, they leave stage after a scene, go into the pit, which is offstage right, sit down in the pit and play music for the rest of the show. So they are constantly playing music through this entire show. And it's incredible.

[16:00] Jeff: The book is written by Itamar. Is that how you say his name? Itamar?

[16:04] Marc Ginsburg: Itamar, yeah. Moses, who is, I think, most well known for writing for television. He was a writer on Men of a Certain Age.

[16:15] Jeff: Boardwalk Empire was the big one.

[16:16] Marc Ginsburg: Oh, Boardwalk Empire, of course. That was a big one. So they're working together. They create the musical that actually premieres off-Broadway in 2016 and then is very well received. It was developed and produced with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

[16:34] Jeff: Yes, very important. There are so many discussions that we have nowadays about whether the National Endowment for the Arts is something that should exist. If the government should be giving money to the arts, is that important when there are so many other things to be doing? And they say PBS is a huge example that they use about what the NEA supports and promotes. But also shows like The Band's Visit were made possible because of the National Endowment for the Arts. So it's not just Sesame Street. Without art, I mean, what are we doing? It brings people to a whole new place. If there's ever money and support to be given to the arts that can be allocated to the arts, I sure as hell wish it would and that it continues to do so. And I think The Band's Visit talks about that in and of itself. Without even talking about it, it talks about that.

[17:31] Marc Ginsburg: So the production then opens on Broadway at the end of 2017, which is not always a really popular time for something to open.

[17:40] Jeff: It's not, is it? I never thought about that, but it's true.

[17:42] Marc Ginsburg: Especially if they're trying to get the Tony Award hype, they'll open in the spring, right before the deadline so that they get all of the momentum there. But it opens in the fall and immediately becomes a success. It runs for, I think, over 500 performances, which is a couple of years, and then spawns the national tour of which you are a part.

[18:11] Jeff: I'm talking in the present tense that you still are a part of it.

[18:15] Marc Ginsburg: I'm all about that. I'm happy to still be a part of it. Let's go through the show, shall we?

[18:20] Jeff: Yes, let's. The show opens with this band.

[18:25] Marc Ginsburg: It's a military band, right?

[18:26] Jeff: The minute that you see this band, you recognize that they are kind of like the American equivalent of the Armed Forces Band.

[18:36] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah, exactly. It's a police orchestra, as they call it, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra. And they're in this powder blue, double-breasted suit uniforms which do not actually exist in Egypt, by the way.

[18:51] Jeff: Oh, do they not?

[18:52] Marc Ginsburg: That was all constructed for the movie, yeah.

[18:56] Jeff: Well, it's a brilliant design.

[18:57] Marc Ginsburg: I agree. The conductor, who's also the leader, his name's Tewfiq?

[19:02] Jeff: In English, it would be Tewfiq, as we say it.

[19:06] Marc Ginsburg: In a more Arabic tongue, they would say Tawfiq.

[19:09] Jeff: Oh, okay. So, yes, either way is right. He seems like a very strict individual right at the top. And he has this great line where he's like, there will be no mistakes. And nothing karmic like telling everybody that there will be no mistakes to then incur a mistake of gigantic proportions.

[19:31] Marc Ginsburg: If you will, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra have been invited to go to a very artistic city in Israel called Petach Tikva to play at the inauguration of the new Arab Cultural Center. And they're at the bus station or the airport, I should say. And they're supposed to be picked up. Nobody's there to pick them up. So Tewfiq, the conductor, says, I'm going to take control of this. Tell someone to go get tickets for a bus. We're going to take the bus over there. The guy who he tells to go get tickets for the bus goes over and says, we want tickets to Petach Tikva. And the lady says, Petach Tikva or Beta Tikva? And he goes, oh, okay. And kind of thinks, and yeah, he makes the wrong decision. And they end up in this town in the middle of the desert.

[20:24] Jeff: Okay. So the first, the one that they're supposed to go to, how do you say that one?

[20:29] Marc Ginsburg: That is with a P, Petach Tikva.

[20:33] Jeff: Okay. And then what is the other one?

[20:35] Marc Ginsburg: And they end up in Beta Tikva.

[20:39] Jeff: Like, this is what I love is that I would have done exactly the same thing. Immediately, you're in this culture that you don't understand, but you see the mistake that they made and you're like, I completely identify.

[20:51] Marc Ginsburg: 100%. So the difference is that there's a B, you're pronouncing a B instead of a P. That's the big difference.

[20:57] Jeff: Yes, that's the bottom line. The big difference. And you know, the accents are in a different place. There's Petach Tikva and Beta Tikva.

[21:08] Marc Ginsburg: Oh my gosh. What we're doing right now is literally a scene in the show. Just going back and forth like this on stage, which should never be part of a musical, but it is and it works and it's amazing. So we got, in the band though, we got Tofik, we got Khaled.

[21:22] Jeff: Khaled.

[21:23] Marc Ginsburg: Very important guy. Originally played by Ariel Satchel.

[21:27] Jeff: Is that how you say his name?

[21:28] Marc Ginsburg: Tony Award winning Ariel Satchel, yeah. Just the handsomest guy you could ever see.

[21:32] Jeff: He certainly is. And I've met him all of one time and he's just as good looking in person.

[21:38] Marc Ginsburg: That is true. There you go. Way to go, Ariel. By the way, the original Tofik was...

[21:44] Jeff: Tony Shalhoub.

[21:46] Marc Ginsburg: Maybe most well known as Monk.

[21:48] Jeff: I would think so. But man, let me tell you, you go back, if you take a little dive into IMDB and IBDB world, the man's breadth of work is wickedly astonishing.

[22:01] Marc Ginsburg: It's really impressive. He's working nonstop.

[22:04] Jeff: Forever.

[22:04] Marc Ginsburg: He did that TV show, the sitcom in the early 90s, Wings.

[22:09] Jeff: He was in that.

[22:10] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah, that's right. He was in Wings. He was in Galaxy Quest.

[22:16] Jeff: He was the voice.

[22:17] Marc Ginsburg: He was in Men in Black. Wasn't he in Men in Black?

[22:18] Jeff: He was in Men in Black.

[22:19] Marc Ginsburg: He was Jeebs, the guy whose head gets shot off and then it grows another one.

[22:24] Jeff: That was Tony Shalhoub. He was in Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I mean, let's...

[22:28] Marc Ginsburg: Oh, right. We can't forget about that. Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Yep. I mean, this guy just does everything.

[22:34] Jeff: Now that I think about it, in Wings, did we ever know what race he was?

[22:40] Marc Ginsburg: He had this really strange geographically untraceable accent, and I feel like that was kind of the joke, but is that just me or was he actually a specific ethnicity?

[22:50] Jeff: I feel, if I remember correctly, it's been a while, but I feel like that was part of the joke akin to maybe like a latke, Andy Kaufman from Taxi kind of thing, where he says the country that he's from, but it's not a real country, and we're really not entirely sure what his...

[23:09] Marc Ginsburg: Where you're like, is Julie Andrews the queen of your country?

[23:12] Jeff: Right. Let's be honest. And by the way, a million things in theater, too.

[23:17] Marc Ginsburg: Oh, of course. Conversations with my father, Golden Boy, the revival of Lend Me a Tenor. I mean, the man just works nonstop and is a huge supporter of the arts and theater itself, so we like Tony.

[23:30] Jeff: Tony's thumbs up.

[23:31] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah. There are a lot of men in this show. Obviously, we've talked about a few of them in The Band's Visit, and one of the biggest compliments that I feel like I can give David Yazbek is that he writes roles for straight men, and they don't make me angry. I know that sounds weird, but there are so many straight men in musicals, and they honestly don't have a lot of dimension to them. They serve the purpose of being maybe romantic, but all of his musicals have such dynamic men, and I really appreciate that.

[24:06] Jeff: They're sensitive.

[24:07] Marc Ginsburg: They have inner worlds, and their ability or inability to communicate them is done in a very thoughtful way.

[24:14] Jeff: I agree, and so many of them have stereotypical male tendencies to them, the Freddie Bensons and all the guys from Full Monty and what have you, but it's handled in such a smart way, and that's big-time kudos to him.

[24:31] Marc Ginsburg: Absolutely. He has an entire song in The Full Monty about being a man that doesn't make me want to throw up.

[24:40] Jeff: I love that song.

[24:41] Marc Ginsburg: It's a great song, and with the wittiest lyrics you could possibly dream up, it somehow levels the playing field for everybody to enjoy it. The man rhymed cojones and testosterones. I mean, come on.

[24:56] Jeff: Come on. Come on.

[24:58] Marc Ginsburg: That's ridiculous. Home run. Yazzy. I don't know. He needs a nickname.

[25:05] Jeff: I'm going to tell you real quick my favorite David Yazbek story. Use it or don't use it. This is the first day of meet and greets in New York for rehearsals. Everybody's going around giving their inspirational stuff, happy to be here, blah, blah, show is so important, etc., and they turned to him and said, Yazbek, do you have anything? He goes, yes, I have something very important that I want to say, and we're all wrapped. What's David Yazbek going to say? He goes, the water level in the toilet in the men's bathroom is very high, so I just want you to be careful when you go in. If you need to use the facilities, that it doesn't shoot up and spray you like it did to me. Please be aware and please be careful. Thank you. That was his entire opening speech. That was my introduction to David Yazbek. It was my favorite thing ever.

[26:01] Jeff: Okay, so we meet this band. Those are kind of the two main members. How many are orchestra members and how many are just actors?

[26:07] Marc Ginsburg: Excellent question. Let me think. We have Tufek, who's the conductor. We have Khaled and Simone.

[26:14] Jeff: Oh, Simone is the one who plays the oboe or clarinet?

[26:18] Marc Ginsburg: Clarinet, yep. He's working on a concerto that he hasn't been able to finish for a long time. They're both actors. They don't actually play, but we have Kamel, who is my friend Ronnie that I was telling you about. He's an actor, but he also plays. Cello player, darbuka player, which is a drum, and clarinet player. So five people who actually play on stage and two who pretend very impressively. And when this whole misunderstanding goes down of where they need to be going in order to have their performance, they're asking this girl at the ticket counter, and it should be known that on the tour, it is played by a dear friend of the podcast, Miss Sarah Kaepner.

[27:00] Jeff: Yes, it is. Shout out, Sarah.

[27:01] Marc Ginsburg: Shout out, Kaepner. Love her, love that girl. We might be posting a picture of her in that wig because it's glorious.

[27:10] Jeff: Please do. That would make me happy.

[27:13] Marc Ginsburg: I guess it should be known also that Tufek really gets mad at Khaled because he was the one who ultimately made the mistake of getting them to the wrong city. He's the young ne'er-do-well guy who is more interested in picking up girls than listening to orders and playing with the orchestra. And his pickup line is always all about Chet Baker. Do you know Chet Baker?

[27:36] Jeff: Hey, Marc, do you listen to Chet Baker?

[27:38] Marc Ginsburg: Oh, I love me some Chet Baker.

[27:42] Jeff: Me too. Old Devil Moon by Chet Baker. Come on. That is nothing better. My funny Valentine.

[27:52] Marc Ginsburg: So Tufek tells him, like, by the way, after this, you're out of the band. Like you've ruined everything. You're out. And it definitely hurts.

[28:00] Marc Ginsburg: You can see that that hurts the youngest member of the band.

[28:05] Jeff Parsons: All right. So the band is off to one of the cities that is not the right one, which I'm not even going to pretend to remember what we discussed earlier. They think they're off to Petah Tikva, but they are in reality off to Beit Hatikva. And when they show up, they have stumbled into a town that is in slow motion. It is in the middle of nowhere, full of people who I don't want to say are doing nothing, but the whole song is called "Waiting."

[28:30] Marc Ginsburg: You're not wrong there. They're certainly in a state of is this it for my life? They're doing things, but they're not really doing anything. You know, they're moving chairs and they're carrying crates, but they're not really doing anything of substance, we'll say. One of the big locations that we discover is a cafe, and the cafe is run by one Miss Dina. Dina is a divorcee, correct? She doesn't have any children, but she owns this cafe that has two workers who are named Poppy and help me out with the other one.

[29:11] Jeff Parsons: It's Itzik.

[29:12] Marc Ginsburg: Yep. How would you describe Dina? Because I'm interested, Dina. I mean, I would love to hear how so many people describe Dina because she's a fascinating character. She's very—I don't mean to say this in a derogatory way—but she's very Israeli in her directness, in her slightly off-putting manner that could be interpreted as off-putting.

[29:39] Jeff Parsons: Exactly.

[29:40] Marc Ginsburg: But she's someone who just has always wanted to live life and never has been able to. She talks about how she, when she was younger, she wanted to be a dancer and they say, well, why didn't you? And she just goes, I don't know. Just didn't work out. Basically, I wanted to. Didn't happen. And she just kind of leaves it at that. And she's someone who is resigned to her lot in life. But once something more and once something to happen to her, you know, this whole time she just hasn't. And so many of the people in this town just haven't been able to feel anything except the everyday humdrum life that they have. And I feel like she's such a passionate person. And that passion has had no outlet whatsoever. But a thoughtful, caring, smart, witty as hell person. Yeah, that's the best way I can put her.

[30:40] Jeff Parsons: It's almost like she doesn't belong in the town. And yet she seems like such an essential fixture of the town. And I think putting it for those of us who have come from small towns or even visited places, you meet people like that. And I'm grateful for people like that because in many ways they are responsible for the pulse of the city. Right. The fact that they didn't pack up and move to Los Angeles is actually a huge blessing for the people surrounding them. I mean, what would that place be without Dina?

[31:06] Marc Ginsburg: Absolutely. And I know that that means that there were a lot of sacrifices that she probably incurred. But what a fascinating person. Originally on Broadway, she was played by Katrina Lenk.

[31:21] Jeff Parsons: Yes. Originally on Katrina Lenk. Right. Right. From California. And I need to say that I have never seen anything more alluring or mesmerizing in my life. What a performance.

[31:36] Marc Ginsburg: I'll tell you, I sadly, so sadly, I never got to see the show live, which stinks. But having said that, and I guess I could say this out loud now in preparing for the show, I was looking to see if there was anything that I could find. And I did find a bootleg of the show, which, of course, I didn't find a bootleg. But if I did, I watched it. And seriously, her performance from a crummy camera phone from the balcony, it still reached that person's phone and reached through the phone and just was so captivating and just really just so rich and beautiful. I was so happy to, even though I didn't see it in person, to have been able to at least get a small hint of it for that little bit of time. It was amazing.

[32:27] Jeff Parsons: She's an extraordinary performer and she's got this maturity or not maturity. She has this kind of inner wisdom where you're like, is she in her early 20s or her late 40s? Like, you can't really tell how old she is because of her spirit. And she does, she moves like a dancer. She has this port de bras that alludes to the fact that she's a natural mover. And I love that she was nominated for a Chita Rivera award for best dancer in a show. She doesn't even really dance in that show. She just has, she pretends to conduct at one point. But the way that she was able to move was almost like dancing. It drives home, I think, the importance of actors to study dance because you see what she's able to do with her body as an actor. And that isn't by accident. That is knowing your craft. That's knowing your instrument.

[33:21] Marc Ginsburg: Absolutely. And a huge shout out to our choreographer, Patrick McCollum, too, who...

[33:27] Jeff Parsons: Oh, wow. Yeah, please.

[33:28] Marc Ginsburg: Let me tell you that every... I watched the rehearsals of this. I watched them work on this number ad nauseum because it is so intricate and so specific and so expressive that anything out of place, because it's so intimate, anything out of place, I don't want to say ruins it, but it changes it. It's mesmerizing to watch. And I give him all the credit in the world for developing that and creating that.

[34:02] Jeff Parsons: That's amazing. I think all of the numbers have those little touches where the choices that needed to be made had to be the right choices because there are so few of them.

[34:10] Marc Ginsburg: Absolutely. The next song is called "Welcome to Nowhere," which is Dina and Itzik and Poppy kind of explaining to the band where they are, that they are not where they think they are, that they're in fact in nowhere. And it's one of those numbers that I think could have possibly gone to this place of, look, we're doing a musical, but instead it's almost deadpan. If they do anything, it's because they're making fun of themselves, not making fun of musical theater. And so it's both funny, but appropriate for the show. They, in kind of a "Come From Away" type situation, they decide to take in this band that some of them can stay with Poppy, some of them can stay with Itzik, and then Taufik can stay with Dina. And so, which is very generous because we're talking about Egyptians in Israel and they don't have the best past in terms of relationships. As recent as the 1970s, there was a huge war. I think it was, was it the Yom Kippur War?

[35:17] Jeff Parsons: It is very, very nice.

[35:18] Marc Ginsburg: Yes. And then ultimately led to peace discussions that were kind of overseen by Jimmy Carter, I think. As recent as that and as far back as, I mean, we think about the story of Moses took place in Egypt and so the Jewish people were not treated so well at that time. So we're talking not big fans of the Egypt. We're talking something that's been festering for 5,000 some years. It's insane.

[35:40] Jeff Parsons: Dang it. That's so fascinating. Like we don't understand that type of history in America because we're so young, like respectively, when we're talking 5,000 years ago, like we have no concept of that. That's insane. I mean, America is what, 250 years old, 250. And we're talking about something that was 5,000 years old. I mean, there's no way to quantify that in your brain.

[36:11] Marc Ginsburg: So not at all. This is what I love about the show is clearly we're at a place right now where Egypt and Israel are okay, you know, as well as can be expected given the history and what have you. But, you know, when you grow up, you have relatives who remember that and there's, it's still a little raw and I'm sure many of them were taught to be wary of Egypt and at the very least have heard stories about what happened and can develop their own opinions on it. But that's where the beauty in the show comes in because it's not about politics and it's not about Israel and Egypt. It's about basic humanity and basic human kindness, where these people are in your town, they're stuck. They have nowhere to go.

There's no hotel in this town. They have nowhere to go. The next bus doesn't come until the morning. So they're either going to sleep on the streets or you're going to help them. And it's you looking at these people and saying, well, I know I'm not supposed to like them, but they never did anything to me. I don't know who these people are. I'm going to do the decent human thing and say, I'll give you a place to sleep for the night. It's such an important lesson in this show because it's not about politics. It's not about religion. The word Jew, I think, is spoken once in the entire show. You know, we don't hear anything about religion. Everything that I'm kind of spouting off in terms of the history of Egypt and Israel is because I felt inspired to look into the history of it.

This is not a history lesson for Western people about these two different groups of people. You can sense a certain amount of history from the way that they interact, but there is no someone sitting down and being like, you don't understand 5,000 years ago, my people escaped your people. Like, the closest we get to seeing that there's some kind of discomfort in this situation is literally toward the beginning. A couple of people say, when they show up, when the Egyptians show up, where are you from? And they say, we're from Egypt. And they just go, Egypt. Wow. And it's just in those words, in those like five, six, seven words tells a whole story.

[38:33] Jeff Parsons: Where are you from? We're from Egypt. Egypt. Wow.

[38:40] Marc Ginsburg: Now we start splitting up and watching where they all go. The first place we go is Dina's apartment. At Dina's apartment are Taufik and Khaled. And she does this scene with a watermelon. Now, is it a watermelon in yours as well?

[39:03] Jeff Parsons: You better believe it.

[39:04] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's my favorite thing in the world. It's very difficult to, you know, we've become good friends with our crew, of course. And let me tell you how difficult it is to get fresh watermelon in Minneapolis in December.

[39:10] Jeff Parsons: I'm sure. Oh, man.

[39:11] Marc Ginsburg: But yes, there is watermelon. There is always watermelon. Okay. So she does this song. It's called "It Is What It Is," I think. And she's, you know, slicing watermelon for the two guys. But it's like, also choreography, like the first big slice is like on one beat, completely having a watermelon. And is that all like, is it just like the best knife in the world? Or?

[39:36] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. Because I've never been able to do that. I must take a huge whack at it.

[39:40] Marc Ginsburg: There have been many a rehearsal on this about on the watermelon, because you need to be at the right angle for the audience to see it, but you need to be safe about it, and you need to get it in the right place. So it's, it's a big, but literally, it's just a sharp knife. And she with all of her might hacks the hell out of that watermelon. It's incredible. And she puts it in, you know, slices into slices once again on the music. So like, this is choreography, but it's not choreography. And as a dancer, I'm completely enthralled. I'm like, this is the best choreography I've ever seen in my life.

[40:15] Jeff Parsons: And what do we get at the end of the song? Like, where do we end up?

[40:19] Marc Ginsburg: Well, the fun thing is, we don't end up anywhere is that she literally says, I was young and stupid. And I met my husband, you know how these things go. Without telling us anything about that. She says, you know how these things go? And we're like, No, no, I don't. I don't. Can you explain? And the song ends with her going, and it is what it is, you've got what you got, then blah, blah, blah. And you're like, what? Wait a minute. Do we clap? God knows that. And thank God they never ever do. But it's, it's so it's fascinating, because, again, it's a musical, but it's not a musical because you're going, wait, is the song—oh, was that a song? What was that? That's so cool. It's like, it was more like, almost a stream of conscious, you know, thing for her, which is so fascinating.

[41:05] Jeff Parsons: It's great that we get a lot from her because you know that that obviously tells a lot about a person when you won't talk about yourself and you're guarded and shielded and not vulnerable.

[41:18] Marc Ginsburg: Right. And at the same time, we get nothing from her except for the fact that she wanted to be a dancer, and she was married one time. Wow. And that's, that's and blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah. All right. So from there, we go to It's Itzik's place. And he has a wife and a baby. Correct?

[41:38] Jeff Parsons: It's Itzik is the guy who works at the cafe with Dina.

[41:44] Marc Ginsburg: Right. One of the guys. Actually, I take it back. It's Itzik does not work at the cafe. He's just there a lot.

[42:00] ⚠ About 4 minutes of audio could not be automatically transcribed.

[45:54] Marc Ginsburg: He is aptly named Telephone Guy.

[45:57] Jeff Parsons: Yes!

[45:57] Marc Ginsburg: That is his name. That's all we ever know. We know that his girlfriend's name is Amalia, but all we know of him is he is Telephone Guy.

[46:06] Jeff Parsons: Not since Piragua have we had a character without a name be so amazing.

[46:12] Marc Ginsburg: That's right. Great. Back at Dina's place, Khaled, who's the younger guy, has decided to kind of go out. They all have. Dina has decided to take Tufek out to eat, and Khaled wants to go out as well. So they go in two different ways. And Dina and Tufek end up at a restaurant.

[46:32] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, crummy.

[46:35] Marc Ginsburg: With those red plastic trays. It looks like the mall. It looks like a place that you would go at the mall. It's so great. So she has her food, and they start talking about art, specifically Egyptian. And she reveals that there were all of these artists that reached her from where he's from, that there were these Egyptian films and Egyptian music that would reach her ears and inspire something within her.

[47:08] Jeff Parsons: From what I understand, our wonderful dramaturg slash Israeli dialect coach, Zohar, would tell us about this, that she's from Israel, and she would say that their TV signals weren't very strong back then. They'd get a couple channels and all that. But on, I believe she said Friday evenings, they would get a broadcast from Egypt, just a random broadcast, whether it be a TV show or music or whatever. And one of the big draws that people used to wait to see every single week was an Egyptian singer. I mean, maybe one of the most famous people in the history of Egypt, and I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that, Um Kulthum. And the people were mesmerized by her and by her singing. And that's who Dina latched on to, Um Kulthum and Omar Sharif, as she says.

[48:02] Marc Ginsburg: And this song called Omar Sharif is one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs I've ever heard in my life. And I think it's one of the best songs of that entire Broadway season.

[48:13] Jeff Parsons: Oh yeah, I would agree wholeheartedly.

[48:16] Marc Ginsburg: From the music and the sound of it to the instrumentation of it, and then the lyrics. She talks about how she's receiving this culture from Egypt through her television or through her radio or whatever. And it's like honey in her ears and spice in her mouth. And that it came in on a jasmine wind. Like, oh my gosh, it paints such an amazing picture.

[48:38] Jeff Parsons: The living room becomes a garden. The TV set becomes a fountain. I mean, if you're listening to those lyrics right now and you're not seeing that somewhere in your mind's eye, I mean, I'd be stunned because it just, it is beautifully, beautifully written.

[48:55] Marc Ginsburg: And once again, like Dina is such a, she seems like such a tough individual who then has no problem opening her heart in such a revealing and vulnerable way. It's just such a fascinating character.

[49:09] Jeff Parsons: Which then allows a tough character like Tufik to do the same later on. A very non-vulnerable character who just completely opens up everything to her. It's beautiful to watch.

[49:23] Marc Ginsburg: There's this softening that we see throughout the show, I guess of everybody, but it's because of everybody at the same time.

[49:30] Jeff Parsons: Nicely put, yeah. And then the important thing happens.

[49:37] Marc Ginsburg: You are the, you're the mean guy?

[49:39] Jeff Parsons: That's me. That's me.

[49:40] Marc Ginsburg: Oh, gasp. I didn't know that, Marc Ginsburg.

[49:44] Marc Ginsburg: Yes. Whenever people ask who I am, which happens a lot at the stage door, they say, who are you again? And I say, I was the guy in the leather jacket who smokes and yells a lot.

[49:54] Marc Ginsburg: And they go, oh, I got it. Yep. I see. I remember. So that's me.

[49:59] Marc Ginsburg: So Sammy, Sammy the jerk, as we call him, comes in and he's like, Dina, come on. What, what are you doing with this guy? Hey.

[50:09] Marc Ginsburg: Pretty much. Yeah. It's no, it's no joke. Sammy, I'll give you a little, a little thing about how I see Sammy. Sammy.

[50:16] Jeff Parsons: Yes, please.

[50:17] Marc Ginsburg: We don't get much from, from the page, except that he is her on again, off again, lover, and he's got a wife and a kid. That's it.

[50:25] Marc Ginsburg: I see Sammy as the townie who never grew up. He was the cool guy in high school. You know, he probably had his hair slicked back and he, you know, wore cool clothes and baggy jeans. And he was, he was a ladies man and all this kind of stuff. And then he was just stuck in that. And you see it now he's, he's got his wife, but he still has a leather jacket over a track jacket over a yellow tank top with, you know, and he's, he's smoking cigarettes. He still has the baggy jeans and he still thinks he is the cool guy and he's just not. And that's so gross again. I don't think he's the bad guy. There's really no bad guy in this piece, but right.

[51:09] Marc Ginsburg: He's the guy with the questionable morals and the questionable decisions, but he's there and there's nothing we could do about it. So he comes in and peas in their cornflakes during this lovely moment for sure. And it gives her, I guess, the opportunity to, to stand up and be like, be nice. But at the same time, it's as Dina would do it. It's not like how Sandra Bullock would do it in a film. No. And she, she takes the opportunity. Let, let's just say Sammy is definitely not a nice guy and he's not doing the right things, but she could very easily have just let that opportunity go by, you know, where she sees him and just goes, don't, don't look at him. He's this guy I'm seeing. Don't look at him. I don't want to, you know, cause problems on this nice night that we're having, but she full on says, Sammy, come on over and talk to us.

[51:53] Jeff Parsons: Wow.

[51:54] Marc Ginsburg: And she, she full on flexes in front of, in front of Tufic and it's just like, Hey, what are you doing here? You're out with, for a nice night with your family, like really leaning in and, and purposely trying to piss him off because she says, he knows this is a place I like to eat. He wasn't supposed to bring her here. And now she's exacting some form of revenge in front of his wife and in front of this guy. And Sammy is not happy about it at all.

[52:21] Jeff Parsons: Wow. Interesting.

[52:22] Marc Ginsburg: Yep.

[52:23] Marc Ginsburg: That's a, that's some serious power play. I love it.

[52:26] Jeff Parsons: Okay. Where do we go from there? Do we go to, uh,

[52:28] Marc Ginsburg: that's when we go back to Itzik's apartment where they ask Simone to play, um, play his concerto.

[52:35] Marc Ginsburg: So finally he does play, but it's not finished. And when he gets done, uh, everyone's like, is that it? And he's like, yeah, I told you, I like, I didn't finish it. It's not that great.

[52:45] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah. What happens is then Itzik has this beautiful monologue. We call it the tree monologue, um, where he says in, in short, you know, when I was a kid, I had a birthday and my mom made this beautiful party for me, but I climbed a tree and it was just so beautiful there that I didn't want to come down and people were calling my name. I didn't answer. I wanted to be in the tree and I missed my birthday. And he says, maybe you not finishing your concerto is like this. You're just in a tree and you don't want to come down, which I think is just amazing.

[53:16] Marc Ginsburg: An amazing way of looking at it. It's just so fascinating and beautiful. And of course his wife is not having that.

[53:22] Marc Ginsburg: His wife's like, no, you're still in that stupid tree and you won't come down. And we're all here trying to make life work while you're in a stupid tree.

[53:31] Jeff Parsons: That's right. Which I, my God, I love that scene. It's so great.

[53:34] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah. And, and I mean, she makes the scene, but at the same time, you know, it's not the first time that this has happened. You like this, this feels like something that's constantly brewing and has been a problem in their relationship for, for some time.

[53:49] Marc Ginsburg: And the thing is, when you look at it, you, you know, you could be watching the show and just going, geez, lady, take it easy. This is holy mackerel. They're having, we're having a really nice night here, you know, but then you step back and you go, no, she is 100% justified. She's absolutely justified.

[54:04] Marc Ginsburg: 100% where this whole time he doesn't have a job and he's just hanging in his tree and life's happening. And she's, you know, she cares for invalids, um, at, in her own words, uh, for her job. And then she comes home and takes care of the baby and takes care of her husband and takes care of her father. And he's just in his tree the whole time.

[54:22] Jeff Parsons: Oh, it's a heartbreaking, heartbreaking moment.

[54:26] Marc Ginsburg: Once at the very beginning of the show, we identify with the band in making this kind of mistake. We're then able to see all of these situations from their perspective and to be one of these band members at this home, when this fight occurs, you, you feel the tension of what that's like, but then at the same time, you feel compassion because you've grown to love these other people as well. It's, it's an empathic experience that.

[54:50] Jeff Parsons: It sure is. And the natural progression from there is obviously to go into a roller rink.

[54:58] Marc Ginsburg: Where else do you go after a domestic dispute, but to a roller rink, of course.

[55:01] Marc Ginsburg: Exactly. So she shows, so she storms out of the, of the house and then we see some really expert, uh, roller skating.

[55:09] Jeff Parsons: No joke. No joke.

[55:10] Marc Ginsburg: Um, it's really fantastic.

[55:12] Marc Ginsburg: It's impressive.

[55:12] Marc Ginsburg: And, uh, we have Holid and we have Poppy and Poppy is now, does he work at the cafe or is he just a hanger out or two? Okay. So he actually works at the cafe. Yes. And he's on this like double date with his friend who has a velour shirt. I don't know what his name is.

[55:28] Marc Ginsburg: Zeliger.

[55:30] Marc Ginsburg: I mean, he has some fashion statements in the show.

[55:35] Marc Ginsburg: Let me tell you. And the hair, don't forget the hair, the long flowing locks.

[55:40] Marc Ginsburg: Good heavens. So he has this date and they're like hot and heavy and, and happy. And then Poppy has Julia also played by Sarah Kepner, who is like a wet blanket, I guess is how you would call her.

[56:30] Marc Ginsburg: They're skating to this song. The one couple's hot and heavy and doing all of these crazy tricks. And then you got Gloom and Doom and Poppy, who is just the worst date you've ever seen. Ever. And Khalid is there, who once again has kind of established himself as this romantic guy who's always into Chet Baker. And he kind of goes up to Poppy and is like, buddy, how can I help with this situation? And Poppy has this great song about how whenever he talks to girls, all he hears is the ocean. And this is such a great David Yazbeck song. It's the most Yazbeck song in the show. It's great to listen to on the album. But then when you see it actually performed in person, it takes on a whole other level.

It's a great song to see acted as well as to hear sung. Khalid then responds by singing a song called Khalid's Song About Love. Aptly named, yes. Another fantastic song that sounds just like a Chet Baker song. And he croons and is kind of explaining to him about what love is and how to bring it about in relationships. And it doesn't feel gross or creepy, because we understand that in many ways, Khalid is living out this wish fulfillment that he isn't going to have in his life. Because in his family, in Egypt, it's arranged marriage. He will not be able to pick who he falls in love with and marries. And so he's kind of living out this fantasy through Poppy's life and really inspires within him.

It starts out as a solo and then becomes a duet to show that Poppy agrees and kind of implements this outlook on life. It's such a fun moment. And he ends up skating with Gloomy Girl. I always thought when I first heard the show and I heard Khalid's Song of Love, I was like, well, what a great moment to have an Arabic song in here. I'm so curious why they didn't do that. But then after watching it for a while, I went, oh, this is Khalid's language. His language is jazz. His language is Chet Baker. And that's where this song comes from. And it finally made all the sense in the world to me. And I just went, I get it now. And it is a beautiful moment. I really, really enjoy it.

[58:49] Jeff Parsons: That's really cool. After the roller rink, we go to the park and the park is in quotations, big time, because the park is a bench and the rest is up to your imagination. And so Dina takes Tofik, the conductor, to this park, but they sit on the bench and have this conversation about basically what it means to be a conductor. She kind of feels like, oh, that must feel so powerful to give a downbeat of the music. And in many ways, he kind of doesn't think so. You know, it's something that he's used to. It's something that he's been doing for a long time. And not that we aren't passionate about things that we do for a long time or that we're used to. But when somebody says to you, you know, Jeff, it must feel so great to, you know, be doing all those time steps.

And you're like, they're time steps. You know, it's fun. I enjoy it. But it's not like a life altering moment for you anymore. I would, I would assume not. I don't, I don't mean to. Especially with Tap, I'll say the things that the audience applauds for are never the hardest things.

[59:58] Marc Ginsburg: Right. Like I just did something really, really intricate. And then I did trenches.

[1:00:00] Jeff Parsons: I was just about to say they love trenches. I was just about to say they love trenches. You beat me to it. Oh, but yeah, we all have those. We all have those things. And he just says, no, the most important thing in the world is fishing. And the audience, the audience, the audience laughs and he just goes, no, it's just, you're out there and it's the waves and the cool, the water and the bait. And it's just quiet and beautiful. And it's a beautiful moment where he goes, yeah, that's great. And I enjoy it, but I have much more simple pleasures than that. I don't, I don't need that to feel inspired in my life every single day. Which gives way to a kind of inner monologue. And it's the only time that this I think really happens in the show. So Dina sings the song called something different, which is her breaking away from him and having a moment to herself of realizing this is a different kind of person, obviously different than Sammy.

[1:01:04] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah. Yeah. And what would it be like to be with someone like this, someone who appreciates silence, who appreciates simple things. And I love that it's not a love song. No, it's not one of those. He's transformed me. I feel, you know, such a love for him. No, she's just, she just says, wow, what's because he starts singing for her right before that in Arabic. And she goes, wow, what's he singing? Is it a hymn? Is it a love song? What's he singing? That's so, is it all this? Or is he just singing about fishing? What what is he singing about? And he's not a young man. He doesn't have young hands, as she says.

[1:01:38] Jeff Parsons: Oh, that's right. It's beautiful. And she goes, I don't know what I feel and I don't know what I know. And at that point in any regular Broadway show, she would say, I don't know what I feel. I don't know what I know, but I think it's called love.

[1:01:58] Marc Ginsburg: Oh, you're so right. Call it out. Of course, we've heard it and it's all beautiful. But she says, I don't know what I feel and I don't know what I know. All I know is I feel something different. And that's so powerful that it doesn't have to be, you know, when we have these moments in our lives, different is good because different leads to thought and it leads to action and it leads to looking inside yourself.

[1:02:23] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. So beautiful. Man, it's beautiful. This is a good show, right? This is a good show. It's a pretty good show.

[1:02:29] Marc Ginsburg: It's a good show. I like this show. After that beautiful scene, we go to another beautiful scene, which is honestly, this is my favorite scene in the show. We go back. Jeff, you make me so happy. Keep going. First of all, Sammy, you miss Sammy second entrance when Sammy comes in and yells at him again. I'm just saying, forgive me. I'm just saying there is actually quite a bit of yelling.

[1:03:05] Jeff Parsons: There is. There is. He just says, what were you doing there? You know, my wife's asking all these questions and they yell at each other and they walk off. But no, I'm so glad that you said that this next scene is your favorite because it's my favorite, too. Really? Yes.

[1:03:15] Marc Ginsburg: Okay. So we go back to it's apartment, right? And I want to remind everybody the wife has left. And so it's there with the baby who is sleeping. And does it begin with the song?

[1:03:23] Jeff Parsons: It begins with the song. Again, transition music as we're melting into the apartment. Itzik is pushing the crib out and we hear we hear the oud, which is the, you know, the Arabic guitar esque stringed instrument being played. But there's no place for your for your leg.

[1:03:37] Marc Ginsburg: No, not a normal guitar. It's just a big bowl in there. It's just a single oud playing and it's beautiful. And it starts singing the lullaby to his son, which is my favorite song in the show. Once again, like when do we have a complex character like the quote unquote do nothing husband who's a disappointment to his wife have this tender moment of expressing love and insecurity to their child?

[1:04:11] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. And it's not that he's not aware of this. That's exactly he literally sings a line. We fell in love, your mom and I, we started plans and started life. But now we fight and back away the loser and the loser's wife. I mean, it's just how he sees himself.

[1:04:29] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah. And as a guy with a with a young son, I just every time I hear it, it just breaks my heart. It's just so, so sad. This gives way to the wife coming back. And he, of course, was worried, but it leads to a little bit more arguing. And then and then the baby starts crying and the baby wakes up, which, of course, is the worst thing that I think you can do to a young couple is wake their baby, right?

[1:05:01] Jeff Parsons: Yes. Sleep time is just so essential and and throws everything into, which is probably why you're in the closet right now.

[1:05:07] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah. Yeah, that's you're not wrong. So Simone takes his clarinet into the baby's room and begins playing his concerto to the baby. And as he begins to play, the baby falls back asleep and then he's able to finish his concerto.

[1:05:28] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. Like, are you kidding me? It's such a beautiful, miraculous moment. That gift, because it is a gift, releases this current of emotions in both Itzik and his wife that wouldn't have been able to be released otherwise. Right. And you see them crumble onto the ground, sobbing and holding each other. It's so special. It's such a special, intimate moment. Do you think that it provides an opportunity for connection for them in their marriage as well?

[1:05:54] Marc Ginsburg: Absolutely. I think so. And, you know, she does start crying and she does have a breakdown. And I think that's a time that, you know, Iris is not a shy person. She'll tell you what she what she thinks. And I think now that he sees the desperateness, that's desperation. That would be the right word. Desperation of the situation. You know, he can he can finally say to her, tell me what's tell me what's going on. What can I do when she couldn't when she could barely voice it herself before. Right. And now she she could say these things. You can you can say, I just thanked a complete stranger and I haven't been able to do that with you. Why is that? It's not going to solve everything. You know, they're not going to be fine tomorrow, but at least they can see each other for the first time. You know, it's that moment when you stop seeing anger and you start seeing pain.

[1:07:10] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, I think anger even looking around at what's going on in the nation right now, anger can be a really powerful motivator for change. It can it can be a a catalyst for something else. But the moment that you actually see the pain underlying is when is the moment of connection is the moment where I think you meet someone soul to soul.

[1:07:23] Marc Ginsburg: Absolutely. Oh, good show. So good. It's a it's a good musical.

[1:07:27] Jeff Parsons: All right. Where do we go next? Help me out.

[1:07:34] Marc Ginsburg: Oh, we go back to the street with Dina and Tufek. This is where everything comes out. So then.

[1:07:39] Jeff Parsons: Oh, shoot. Right. This is where. Oh, my gosh. I thought we were in the clear, but we're not. We haven't even started.

[1:07:43] Marc Ginsburg: Oh, no. This is where it really gets good. So thanks for sticking around, guys. This is right now. Now we're getting to the good stuff. So how does this revelation come out about Tufek and his past?

[1:08:02] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, it basically comes out there walking along and Dina finally gets, you know, some guts and says, hey, these songs that we're talking about, these Arab songs and these Arab movies, we could live that if you want, you know, big love, Arabic love. We can live that tonight. We might not have it all together, but tonight we could live that kind of life for one night. What do you say? And again, in any other musical or many musicals, he would say, you're right. You're wow. You're a fantastic lady. Cue love song. Cue love song. And the next thing he says is, Dina, my wife died because of me. And you just go, oh, my God. Now what?

[1:08:34] Marc Ginsburg: We never hear specifically what it is, but we hear that Tufek and his wife had a son, a bright and beautiful son. He was a wonderful guy, but he made some mistakes and he keeps saying I didn't understand him. He says like he was sensitive like her, which immediately made me think is was he gay? Like I thought like that was honestly my first thought. I mean, that's that's always how I interpreted it. But we, you know, the only one who would know is Iran coloring who wrote the original the original film. I would love to pick his brain one day. But yeah, that's that's where I went to, of course. But he never says, you know, he did this awful thing, this despicable thing, and I couldn't take it. He just keeps saying he made some mistakes and he didn't say I banished him or I kicked him out. He just kept saying I didn't understand him.

[1:09:33] Jeff Parsons: Right.

[1:09:34] Marc Ginsburg: He had this going on and I just I couldn't understand. I tried to understand I couldn't understand him. And I think that's a beautiful, beautiful thing. And it turns out, obviously, that his son took his life and it basically it killed his wife and she ended up dying. Essentially what we could we could deem it as a broken heart. You know, I'm sure there was something else, but she was she was never the same and never recovered. And he's basically telling her, this is why I am the way I am. And I'm not I'm not.

[1:11:01] Marc Ginsburg: This is after, finally, after he and Hollad have been at odds this whole time and he turns to him and says, I like Chet Baker. And Hollad starts playing the music and they have this connection and Tewfiq says, I'm going to sleep, but here's the best part. Then Dina says, she gives it one more valiant effort. She says, oh, you don't want some wine? I have some in the fridge. And we all know what wine means, let's be honest. She might as well have said Netflix and chill, but she said I have some in the fridge. And he says, no, not for me, not tonight. It's too late. Whether that means it's too late, it's, you know, we have to wake up early in the morning or it's too late for me for that period. And that's, it's another beautiful moment. And he calls Hollad, my boy, he says, good night, my boy. It's this beautiful moment. Which is beautiful because you see him trying something different with Hollad that he wasn't able to do with his own son.

[1:12:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, yeah, that's exactly one million percent. It just locks it all up. And then yes, Dina, at this point, what is she going to do with all that? Let's be honest. She can't just go to sleep and just put that and tuck that back inside. It's got to go somewhere. And there happens to be a pretty good looking guy who, you know, you do what you got to do. Yep. Man, I just can't imagine what she must've been feeling in that moment to have never maybe in her life opened up to someone. She certainly didn't do it with Sammy. I doubt she did it with her husband. And finally, after all this time, she has the guts to do that. And this guy very politely just says, it's too late. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.

I just can't. What's interesting, though, is that the show, despite all of this pain and sadness is actually quite uplifting. It's hilarious. It's great. It's hilarious. And then really has this wonderfully satisfying ending in which telephone guy receives a telephone call. After all that time, he's been waiting by the telephone. He gets the call. And I don't even know what the call says. A funny thing through this whole show, there is obviously English spoken, but there's a lot of Hebrew and a lot of Arabic through the whole show. And not once do we ever use subtitles. There are no subtitles because you don't need to know every single word. Everything has a place and a meaning, but you get what's going on there.

You don't miss a moment if you don't understand what they're saying. The only time subtitles are ever used is on that phone call. That is the only time. I don't know what went into that decision making to have that be the only moment, but that's it. And literally, he picks up the phone and just says, Amalia, is that you? Yeah, yeah. How's it going? Me? I'm doing great. I'm wearing the sweater that you made me. It keeps me warm. That's literally all that is said. Not, Oh my God, my love, my darling, I've been waiting for months for you to call. I'm so happy. He just.

[1:14:05] Marc Ginsburg: Oh my gosh, that's so great. It's unbelievable. The simplicity of that. It's actually kind of a big song with the whole cast called Answer Me. There are only two songs with the entire cast, Waiting and Answer Me. And that's it. And they bookend the show.

[1:14:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It is. It is kind of a back to the beginning moment. We've heard how everybody is waiting and some people have taken steps forward. Some people have taken steps back. Some people are still right where they left. And yet it feels new. It still feels new at the end of the story. In my opinion, at the heart of this show, it's all about connection and communication, like you were saying, and the need to communicate and the need to be heard and the need to express yourself. That's what makes the whole language barrier so interesting and so funny. And Poppy not being able to talk to girls and Itzik and Iris not being able to communicate with each other. It's just everybody is looking to communicate and connect, but nobody ever voices it.

Nobody ever says, I need you to listen to me or listen. And this last song is everybody finally admitting that they just want someone to answer me, just communicate with me, just please hear me. It's just a beautiful moment in the show. I love it. It's such a complete pleasure to sing it every night.

[1:15:26] Marc Ginsburg: That's really cool. I love that. The last moment of the show is the band finally gets to where they were supposed to be going and they're all seated and Tufek, the conductor, comes out and he raises his arms for the big downbeat. And you know that he is thinking of the conversation that he had with Dina about this very moment. And as he brings his arms down for the beginning of something, the lights go out and that's the end of the show. That's it. Boom! Crazy. Uh, uh, uh, uh. And then we start act two.

[1:16:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's a 90 no. One of our faves. That's it. And then after current call, there's like a so much better than Mamma Mia. There's an encore with the band playing and just doing the most insane things you've ever seen with instruments. It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. For those listening, when you come to see the show, we say this every night during curtain call as we're standing there and we see people leaving to get to their cars and be trapped. Seriously, we want to scream out and go, no, no, no, you're missing. You're missing it. You're missing it because literally stay until after curtain call and watch these five musicians just slay it. They play the concert and they each have standout solo moments. And it is you leave with such energy coursing through your body. Oh man. Oh, it's so true that it's so great around.

[1:17:07] Marc Ginsburg: Trust me. Now, obviously me stumbling through the names and cultures and things. This show brings a lot of exposure to me that I haven't had in my, in my own life, but I know that it also brings a lot of exposure to those who are in the show whose life it is and who don't often get to participate in these types of stories. I wanted to read a few quotes. One is from the original Khaled Ariel statue. When he won his Tony award, he said, for so many years of my life, I pretended I was not a Middle Eastern person. I am part of a cast of actors who never believed that they'd be able to portray their own races. And we are doing that. And not only that, but we're getting messages from kids all over the Middle East, thanking us and telling us how transformative our representation is for them.

I want any kid that's watching to know that your biggest obstacle may turn into your purpose. Man, what a good speech inspired. Your biggest obstacle may turn into your purpose. And, you know, that's just something that, that I don't think we understand. They're one of the actors in the show, George Abboud. He was a violinist. He said, when you're a Lebanese actor or an Arab actor in New York, you go in for certain roles and you're kind of destined to play certain situations. Most of them are either politicized or religious or terrorists. And that's, that's basically all you're hired to do. And in this, we finally get a play where everyone is just being a person. And I think that's so funny because like one of the places for comedy is the mundaneness of this town, right?

Waiting, nothing, answer me. I just, this kind of nothingness. And yet that is what makes it so special is that we're not talking about terrorism. We're not talking about 9-11. We're not talking about anything other than people going through the exact same things that anybody else might go through in those particular situations, just through this lens that feels a little foreign. And in doing so, teaches us so much.

[1:19:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh man, you, you couldn't possibly be more right. I mean, we talk about this all the time. One of our actors, James Rana, who plays Simone, he loves this show more than anybody, but he's done the show over 800 times and he's never gotten tired of it and never ever will. This is his home because when he was in New York, before this show came along, the roles that he was being called in were doctors, religious figures, and terrorists. And that was it. And I'm talking, this is a, this is a highly trained performer with a passion for the work and he couldn't get seen for anything other than doctors and terrorists basically. And this show came along and changed his life. It didn't make him a superstar.

It didn't make him a multimillionaire. It made him a person and it made him a human being with a story to tell. Clearly I don't want to speak for him, but I've had this conversation many times with him and it's just heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. And hopefully this is the beginning of much more of that. There is room. There is room for everyone in everyone's story. And I can't wait to see and learn about more, more people in more parts of the world.

[1:20:30] Marc Ginsburg: Yeah, me too. Thank you so much for doing this with me, Mark. I had a wonderful time.

[1:20:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Pleasure was mine. Thank you.

[1:20:36] As always, if you have suggestions for shows you'd like us to cover on a musical theater podcast, you can always email me at a musical podcast at gmail.com. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram at a musical podcast for more great content. And be sure to check out our Tee Public store where we have original designs that you can put on pretty much anything, including face masks in case you want a cute musical theater face mask that are paying homage to some of our favorite episodes of the podcast, both past and present. Mark, how do we follow you and everything you're up to?

[1:21:10] Marc Ginsburg: Oh, thank you for asking. Well, hopefully we'll be out on the road again sooner rather than later. I'll be posting about that. There are a bunch of places. There's my Facebook page. That's the Mark Ginsburg official page. I'm on Twitter at M underscore Ginsburg, G-I-N-S-B-U-R-G. I'm on Instagram at Mark, M-A-R-C underscore Ginsburg. They're different because somebody snatched them up before I got to them. So sorry about that, guys. And there's my website, www.markandliza.com. And there's always the Band's Visit website where hopefully they'll keep you updated on when we go back out whenever that may be. Be on the lookout for it because as listening to this episode, you can tell it's an experience that you can't miss in the theater.

[1:22:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The gentleman who is playing Tufik is a gentleman named Sasson Gabay, who is a mega, mega Israeli star. I mean, like the Marlon Brando of Israel. I'm not even kidding.

[1:22:17] Marc Ginsburg: Oh, my gosh. And it just so happens that he was Tufik in the movie.

[1:22:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No way!

[1:22:24] Marc Ginsburg: Yes, sir. This is his role. I have no idea.

[1:22:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yep. He was actually approached to do the original Broadway production way back, but he had conflicts. He eventually replaced Tony Shalhoub for the last little bit on Broadway, and he's been with us this whole time on tour. And this, nothing against Tony or anybody else who's played it, but if you want to see the person who this role was meant for, you know, come on out and see Sasson Gabay.

[1:22:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Hot dang. I just got even more excited.

[1:22:54] Marc Ginsburg: Yep.

[1:22:55] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Thank you again, Mark.

[1:22:56] Marc Ginsburg: My pleasure.

[1:22:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I hope to see you soon.

[1:22:57] Marc Ginsburg: I hope so.

[1:22:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Can't wait to see you soon.

[1:22:59] Marc Ginsburg: Let's come out of the closet and hang out sometime.

[1:23:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right. Exactly. Until then, however, what should we give to our listeners? How should we end this?

[1:23:08] Marc Ginsburg: Let's see. Oh, okay. Here we go. Okay. So in the scene, Avram says, Shalom Aleichem, right? Which means peace.

[1:23:17] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Peace be with you.

[1:23:18] Marc Ginsburg: Peace be with you. And then what does Simone say?

[1:23:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: He says, Aleichem Salam.

[1:23:24] Marc Ginsburg: And is that the same thing, but in Arabic?

[1:23:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Essentially, yes.

[1:23:27] Marc Ginsburg: That's fantastic. All right. That means you have to end the show with saying both of them.

[1:23:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, no, you say Shalom Aleichem and I'll say Aleichem Salam.

[1:23:36] Marc Ginsburg: Okay. Perfect. Perfect. All right. So Shalom Aleichem.

[1:23:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Aleichem Salam.