The musical “The Band’s Visit” isn’t the kind of stage spectacular — with big production numbers, massive colorful sets and glitz-and-glam costumes — that typically wins awards on Broadway.

But surprisingly it did, capturing 10 Tony Awards in 2018, including Best Musical, and the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.

The storyline of the show, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and book by Itamar Moses, based on a 2007 Israeli film of the same name, is a simple one: An Egyptian police band accidentally becomes stranded in an Israeli desert town for just one day and night.

However, the message the hit show delivers is powerful, according to Janet Dacal, one of the stars of the North American touring production of “The Band’s Visit,” playing March 10-15 at the Benedum Center as part of Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh series.

Dacal portrays Dina, a café owner who welcomes the band and its conductor, Col. Tewfiq Zakaria (Israeli actor Sasson Gabay), and arranges for their unexpected overnight stay. Gabay also played Tewfig in “The Band’s Visit” movie and replaced Tony Shalhoub in the Broadway production of the musical.

Dacal performed on Broadway in “Prince of Broadway,” “Wonderland” and “In the Heights” before joining the cast of the national tour of “The Band’s Visit” in January.

From North Allegheny to national tour

The musical also is special for Mike Cefalo, who is making his national tour debut in “The Band’s Visit.” Cefalo, now living in New York City, hails from McCandless and graduated from North Allegheny High School before attending Baldwin Wallace University, where he earned his Bachelor of Music in music theater.

His first roles in his high school musicals were as Ren McCormack in “Footloose” and Marius Pontmercy in “Les Miserables.” His first introduction to “The Band’s Visit” was when he saw the show in New York City as a senior in college.

“I absolutely fell in love with it,” he says. “The cool thing about this show is when it happened in New York, no one knew what hit them.”

The musical is not at all about politics or spirituality, according to Cefalo.

“It’s just about human needs and real people just going through their lives. The best way to go into this is with no expectations,” he says.

He plays a character known as Telephone Guy that he describes as “one of the weirder characters; he’s really a strange bird.” He spends most of his time onstage waiting by the pay phone for his girlfriend to call. (He notes that the musical is set in the 1990s, before everybody had a cellphone.)

One of the last moments of the show features Cefalo and the cast singing an emotional song, “Answer Me,” which won another award for the musical, a 2019 Daytime Emmy Award for a performance of the song by the Broadway cast on NBC’s “Today” show.

Cefalo has performed in regional theater productions and serves as music director of Chickenshed NYC, an inclusive theater company for children of all abilities based in New York City.

‘Music brings us together’

Dacal says the music in “The Band’s Visit” is “just so gorgeous and unlike anything we’ve ever heard on Broadway before. What really resonates in this story is how music brings us together.”

When the groups from two different worlds come together by accident, they are able to connect through their music, when communicating through broken English is a challenge.

“This show is a reminder that when we embrace strangers instead of pushing them away, they can impact us in beautiful and meaningful ways,” Dacal says. She hopes the takeaway from the show is that “we are more alike than different.”

Dacal’s own debut solo album, “My Standards,” was released on Feb. 14, featuring some of her favorite songs from the American Songbook and Cuban classics.

‘Know the Show Before You Go’

Pittsburgh Cultural Trust will offer a preshow talk on “The Band’s Visit” at 6:30 p.m. March 11 at the Trust Arts Education Center downtown. The discussion is free; those attending can register in advance at trustarts.org. Refreshments will be served.

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