The Visitor Tickets

Award-winning duo Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey present the world-premiere musical adaptation of The Visitor, Thomas McCarthy’s award-winning 2007 film. Get The Visitor tickets on TodayTix.

The The Visitor musical follows a widowed college professor named Walter Vale. Living alone, he feels lonely and without a life’s purpose. Before he can even try to find one, one finds him, in the form of a Syrian-Palestinian immigrant couple. The drummer Tarek and jewelry-maker Zainab have taken shelter in Walter’s apartment while he was away at an academic conference, and he lets them stay. He seems to be the only one welcoming them at all, as the couple are illegal immigrants, and they are fighting to stay in the country. Walter gets swept up in their lives, their family relationships, and their struggles.

When The Visitor film first premiered in 2007, McCarthy, who also directed the movie, won the 2008 Independent Spirit Award for Best Director. Richard Jenkins, who starred as Walter, was nominated for Best Actor at the 81st Academy Awards. The film was responding to a post-9/11 world, but the issues of immigration, identity, and more present in the story are no less timely today.

In addition to Kitt and Yorkey, the creative team for The Visitor in New York includes librettist Kwame Kwei-Armah, choreographer Lorin Latarro, and director Daniel Sullivan.

Get tickets to The Visitor in New York on TodayTix.

What to Watch For

• The Visitor composer Tom Kitt and lyricist Brian Yorkey are an award-winning duo. The pair won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for their musical Next to Normal, and the two also won the Tony Award for Best Original Score when the show premiered on Broadway. They also wrote the musical If/Then and the musical adaptation of Freaky Friday.
• Thomas McCarthy, who wrote the film the musical is based on, was inspired to do so after going on a state-sponsored trip to the Middle East and feeling a deep connection with the people he met, particularly in Beirut.
• It’s only fitting that the musical adaptation of The Visitor is premiering in New York, as the film is set there and was shot on location there.
• Alysha Deslorieux, as Zainab, is taking on a role initially held by Danai Gurira in the film. As of late, Gurirahas gained acclaim for her roles in The Walking Dead and Black Panther, and for her play Eclipsed. Like The Visitor, that show premiered at The Public Theater, and Eclipsed went on to receive a Tony nomination for Best Play when it transferred to Broadway.
• Multiple members of the creative team are Public veterans. Daniel Sullivan has helmed 11 Shakespeare in the Park productions, and Kwame Kwei-Armah has also directed four shows at the theatre. Lorin Latarro has choreographed the theatre’s Public Works productions of Twelfth Night and The Odyssey.