Veteran Boston Actor Robert Saoud Finds Hope in Timely 'The Band's Visit'

Longtime Boston stage veteran Robert Saoud has been featured in a long list of musicals in the city and the region, in plays as diverse as "Hello Again," "XANADU," "The Drowsy Chaperone," and "Casa Valentina," along with others – and those are just his credits with SpeakEasy Stage Company. Saoud starred in a nationally touring production of "Groucho: A Life in Review" as Chico Marx (Gabe Kaplan played the title role).

Closer to home, Saoud has also performed at the late, lamented New Repertory Theater, as well as with North Shore Music Company, Trinity Rep, Merrimack Repertory, The Huntington Theater Company, Wheelock Family Theater, and the Umbrella Stage – and, what's more, he spent a year in among the cast of the long-running comedy "Shear Madness."

That's hardly the extent of Saoud's theater resume. He's a cabaret performer at venues around Boston, including Club Café, where he performed his show "Make Your Own Kind of Music" in March of this year – and, due to its popularity, returned in September to do it again.

Saoud has now been cast in a co-production of "The Band's Visit" by the SpeakEasy Stage Company and The Huntington Theatre. A heartwarming musical about what it means to welcome the stranger, "The Band's Visit" follows the adventures that unfold when the members of an Egyptian band on tour in Israel finds themselves in a tiny, remote village rather than the city they were expecting to play. The locals welcome this wayward crew, and hearts, minds, and horizons are all opened over the course of a single 24-hour period.

Saoud plays Avrum, a recent widower whose daughter, Iris, and son in law, Itzik, are new parents – but also, due to the stresses and pressures of their lives, unhappy in their marriage. His own marriage having been happy, Avrum can do little to help; but he does have one of the show's more rousing, charming numbers, "The Beat of Your Heart," in which Avrum reminisces about the night, many years earlier, when he met the woman who would become his wife.

"The Band's Visit" won 10 Tonys and delighted audiences ever since its premiere. The COVID-19 pandemic derailed a national tour, but now SpeakEasy Stage brings the show to Boston under the direction of founding artistic director Paul Daigneault, featuring a cast that includes Brian Thomas Abraham, Marianna Bassham, Jenifer Apple, Jared Troilo, Jesse Garlick, Josephine Moshiri Elwood, Andrew Mayer, Noah Kieserman, Emily Qualmann, Fady Demian, Sarah Corey, James Rana, Zaren Ovian, and Karem Elsamadicy. Jose Delgado serves as music director, with Daniel Pelzig choreographing.

EDGE caught up with Robert Saoud to hear about why he thinks his character gets the best song and how real-world events influence his thinking about a play that feels like a fond dream for a world where peace and acceptance are the norm.

EDGE: Tell me a bit about how you see "The Band's Visit."

Robert Saoud: It's exciting to do a show that's culturally based in the Middle East, which I have never gotten before. I'm not Egyptian. My background is Lebanese. My father was born and raised in Beirut. So, I grew up with a lot of that culture.

This show was on my radar for a number of years. When it originally opened in New York, I was at the Huntington doing "Merrily We Roll Along," and I received a random call. They were looking for understudies for Tony Shalhoub, and a friend of a friend had suggested me. It was, like, "There's no way I'm gonna be able to get to New York tomorrow." So, I didn't do that, but I was like, "This is a show that I need to be able to look out for."

EDGE: Is there a feeling in the room that this is particularly timely, or that what's going on now will color how you're performing the play?

Robert Saoud: We definitely feel that it's timely. What's happening is awful. It's awful for Israel. It's awful for the Palestinians. We're kind of again coming back to, "Wouldn't it be nice if this could be the reality, what the world ends up like?" Who knows if we'll ever get there? But we're all hopeful that peace can actually exist in the region.

EDGE: You play Avrum, which isn't a huge role, but he's very memorable.

Robert Saoud: He's a delightful character. If you ask me, he has the best song in the show. I'm a little biased.

[Laughter]

He has the biggest number in the show. And what I mean by that is, it's probably the most theatrical. It's a very simple musical. It is a beautiful, lovely story, and most of the music is beautiful and lovely, but not typical musical theater. My song is the closest thing to a typical musical theater number; he's thinking about his dead wife, whom he clearly loved very much. The lyrics are very poignant.

EDGE: What I found to be interesting about the script is it doesn't explain a lot. It only hints at what's going on with the characters.

Robert Saoud: I think part of the appeal is the simplicity of it – that, and it doesn't touch on the political strife, especially with what's happening [now]. When these musicians show up in this little Israeli town, nobody really gets upset about it; they embrace them. They take them in, they feed them, they give them a place to sleep, which is what we should do for each other in reality. So, it's kind of... I don't want to say fantasy, but it's something to hope for.

EDGE: This is a play about family. Your character is the father of one of the characters, and her marriage is very complicated.

Robert Saoud: Yes. In the show, my wife passed away about a year ago. [My daughter] has gone through a lot; she lost her mother, she had a baby, she's suffering from postpartum depression. Her husband's been unemployed for a long time and doesn't seem to have the motivation to go out and find a new job. As you said, a lot of it is underwritten. We have to fill in the blanks. We have decided, whether right or wrong, that [Avrum] loves his daughter, and he wants to help her. But being a typical man – we're setting this in the mid-90s – he doesn't know how to help her. That was his wife's job, and she's no longer around. He wants to be supportive, but it's awkward because he doesn't want to get involved in their relationship. There's a lot of layers there.

EDGE: Speaking of family and welcoming people in, you and your husband opened your home to an adopted son. Can you talk about the experience of parenting as a gay adoptive couple?

Robert Saoud: He's 23. We adopted him when he was nine. I can't imagine what it like being in his shoes, coming into a strange household, hearing, "This is where you're going to live." A social worker tried to describe it to us as, "Remember when you were four years old, and you got lost in the mall, and the panic that you felt? That's what he's feeling every day."

Someone else gave us very good advice: "Remember, you're not raising a child, you're growing an adult." It's the hardest job I've ever had, but it's the most rewarding. That's a cliché, I know, but it's true. You see him succeed, and people are like, "You changed his life!" Perhaps we did, but he certainly changed ours as well.

EDGE: Our families are again coming under attack. Is this concerning to you?

Robert Saoud: Definitely. And now we have this new Speaker of the House who is totally anti-LBGT rights. It is frightening. I mean, we in Massachusetts live in a little bubble, but we're not immune to what's happening in the world. We need to be aware of it, and it is scary.

We just keep scratching our heads, going, "How did we get here?" When Obama was elected, the world was like, "Oh, look, everything's going down the path it's supposed to go," and now it's a complete 180. We're glad we live in Massachusetts, but we're constantly conscious of it; our son is African American, and it's terrifying to have to tell your child, "If you're stopped by the police, keep your hands on the wheel and don't say anything."

EDGE: How well do you think it would work if a play like this were written that, instead of Arabs and Israelis, was about gay people and homophobes?

Robert Saoud: Wouldn't that be interesting? A play that needs to be written! I hate to say this, but if it was the Christian religious right who got lost, the gays would take them in and feed them. I don't know, if it was the opposite, if that would happen.

"The Band's Visit" plays Nov. 10 – Dec. 17. For tickets and more information, follow this link.