Based on Tom McCarthy’s 2007 film—a nicely observed character study about a widower whose personal and professional malaise is partly mitigated by an unlikely friendship with an undocumented couple—the new musical The Visitor doesn’t find enough compelling reasons to embellish its characters and their stories with songs.

 

The Visitor follows Walter who, bored of the dull class in economics he’s teaching, returns to his long-vacant New York apartment to prepare to present a colleague’s paper at a conference. He finds Zainab, a young Senegalese woman, and Tarek, her Syrian boyfriend, living there. Taking pity on them since they don’t have another place to go to, he lets them stay, and after Tarek is arrested and thrown into a detention center after jumping the subway turnstile, Walter finds his power of purpose by advocating for his friends while meeting Tarek’s widowed mother, who arrives from Michigan to be closer to her son.

 

Of course, the movie also contains music, in the form of Walter’s late wife, a concert pianist whose CD is played, along with Tarek, who plays the African drum that he teaches Walter to play. For the musical, composer Tom Kitt embraces the drum, mirroring the movie’s scenes of Walter starting to get his groove back, literally and figuratively, through his playing, starting when he joins in on a joyful drum circle in the park.

 

The musical follows the movie fairly closely yet lacks the internal logic of McCarthy’s sharply drawn characters who try to overcome their racial and cultural differences and find a way to mutual understanding. Instead, the book by Kwami Kwei-Armah and Brian Yorkey shaves off the film’s rough edges to concentrate on Tarek and others’ detention to make obvious points about our country’s current immigration mess.

 

To be sure, the musical’s least effective scene—Walter self-righteously berating the guards after discovering that Tarek has been permanently deported—is also in the film, where it glaringly sticks out. Notwithstanding a couple of rousing ensemble numbers (notably the exuberant drum circle of Tarek and his cohorts, who play for, then with, Walter), Kitt’s music—as well as Yorkey’s lyrics—rarely furthers the characterizations or plot. A striking exception is Zaniab’s harrowing description of her journey, “Bound for America.”

 

Daniel Sullivan directs adroitly, the lyrical movements (or lack of such) of the various characters saying a lot more than the songs themselves do; ace choreographer Lorin Latarro deserves praise for that. David Zinn’s simple but effective scenic designs are set off by Japhy Weideman’s lighting, which performs sundry visual wonders, particularly in “Lady Liberty,” a quiet moment of solidarity—which is not in the movie—between Zainab and Mouna.

 

Keeping The Visitor from becoming too pedantic are Ahmad Maksoud’s charming Tarek, Alysha Deslorieux’s appealing Zainab and Jacqueline Antaramian’s tender Mouna. And, as Walter, David Hyde Pierce performs with his usual wry understatement, which fits as snugly as Richard Jenkins’ Oscar-nominated performance in the movie.