How 'The Band's Visit' turns song, speech and silence into stage poetry
NEW YORK - Where do new musicals come from? For a while, the answer regularly seemed to be pop-music catalogs and movies guaranteed to put baby boomers in a nostalgic mood. Broadway became the great cultural recycle bin, a place where small imaginations could turn big profits.
In recent years, however, some of the most memorable new shows have sprung from the most unlikely of places. "Fun Home" was adapted from Alison Bechdel's extraordinary graphic novel about growing up as a lesbian with a closeted gay father. "Hamilton," Lin-Manuel Miranda's game-changer, was inspired from, of all things, Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton. And "Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812" was derived from a slice of
