NEW YORK -- It's a little startling to hear Tony Shalhoub talk in his regular voice. After all, he spends so much time onstage and onscreen trying on other peoples' accents.
The Emmy winner, best known for his role as an obsessive-compulsive detective in the long-running television series Monk, has played Germans, Greeks, Hispanics and Russians and even a space alien in the Men in Black films. On Broadway in Act One, he played three characters -- one with a Cockney accent, one with just a hint of a British accent and one who was an urbane Northeasterner.
He's often gravitated toward Italian parts, playing immigrants from that country in the film Big Night and Golden Boy onstage and a Fiat 500 in Cars. And for eight seasons, he adopted a weird Maine-Italian dialect on Wings that even he's not sure about.
So it's no wonder that Shalhoub re-emerged on Broadway this month in The Band's Visit with a military uniform, a mustache -- and a luxurious Egyptian accent. How his character sounds is one of the first things he works on.
"It's something that, for me, really helps to find the inner life of the character, the more I work on that sound," he says. "And it helps me get to the core of the person."
Shalhoub plays the stiff leader of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, which is booked to play a concert at the Israeli city of Petah Tikvah but accidentally ends up in the drowsy town of Bet Hatikva. Over the next few hours, the townspeople and the musicians learn about each other and themselves.
The musical is based on a 2007 Israeli film of the same name, and has terrific songs by David Yazbek and a touching, sardonic story by Itamar Moses. It's a hazy, adult and beautiful show.
"There's not a lot of flash and dash and screaming and people throwing things. It's not your typical Broadway musical because it doesn't have that sort of size and extravaganza of noise and color," says Shalhoub.
"But it's one of those things that just kind of sneaks up on you -- the music is haunting, the characters are kind of mysterious, and sometimes funny. There's sparseness to it but it's completely engaging. It has all of these elements working for it and, for an actor, it's sort of irresistible."
Though the musical has Egyptian Muslim characters entering an Israeli settlement, there's no mention of the Arab-Israeli crisis or global politics. Shalhoub says that's quite energizing.
"It really does try to steer clear of politics and that's so refreshing nowadays since we're bombarded and assaulted by politics at every turn," he says. "This, I believe, becomes a welcome break from that and a glimpse at what our lives might look like if we're not consumed by all of the divisiveness and backbiting and sniping and one-upping that occurs today."
Shalhoub, who is Lebanese-American, grew up in a multicultural community ripe with accents in Green Bay, Wisc., hence his knack for dialects. He recalls imitating the sounds of Poles, Germans and Scandinavians as a kid.
"There was a wide array of accents. And then of course I was in the Midwest, which is full of all kinds of bizarre and interesting accents, even from town to town," he says.
Shalhoub, 64, might be employing his accent skills once again on Broadway but he's also entering new territory since it's his first musical -- and he even delivers a tune entirely in Arabic.
Yazbek, who was stunned by Shalhoub in Big Night, says the actor was the first person he thought of when the musical was still a draft.
Shalhoub worked with Yazbek at a piano for about 45 minutes and the composer came away confident their leading man could swing it.
Shalhoub, who next will star in the series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon, says he thinks it's healthy for an actor to go into scary or unfamiliar areas.
"I discovered in doing so that I really don't have a comfort zone. So that was a little bit of a revelation," he says. "They speak a language I don't understand.' But I'm learning slowly and -- I'm not sure 'fun' is the right word -- it's an adventure."
Style on 11/12/2017