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TONY SHALHOUB, who starred in the musical The Band’s Visit, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book written by Itamar Moses. The show was adapted from Eran Kolirin’s film, which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. I remember it well. Like the movie, the musical — which I caught in the last days of its extended run at the Atlantic Theatre Company, downtown in Chelsea — is about an Egyptian police force band, in their powder-blue braided uniforms, who are visiting Israel to perform at the opening of an Arab cultural centre. But at the airport, they get on the wrong bus, which takes them to the wrong town. The band’s leader, played by Shalhoub, is mortified. He seeks help from the owner of a bar in the desert deadend in which they have been deposited. It’s such a poignant and beautifully observed piece. Yazbek’s score is just right, in the way that it evokes a sense of time and place. Sarah Jessica Parker was sitting in front of me in the theatre, and the second the last note had been played, she was on her feet, applauding. We all followed suit pretty damn fast. The Band’s Visit resonated on so many levels: not just as a plea for peace and understanding in the Middle East, but for rifts to be healed in the painfully divisive country called the United States of America, too. I hope the show can transfer to Broadway, so that a larger audience can also be transported — and transformed. POM KLEMENTIEFF, who will play Mantis: the new Guardian of the Galaxy. Klementieff (pictured below) told me she had trained solidly for weeks, only to find, when she reported to the set for Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 (due to open in the UK on April 28), that her martial arts and fighting skills weren’t required. She may see more action, though, when she repeats her superhero role in the next Avengers film, which will shoot in Atlanta later this year. I met Klementieff in Los Angeles, where she was attending the W Magazine ‘It Girl’ luncheon. But she told me she was heading to New York, hoping to see the big hit musical Dear Evan Hansen, by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (they wrote the lyrics for La La Land) with a book by Steven Levenson. The show features a performance by Ben Platt that is arguably the best on Broadway right now.