Quiet may well be the new loud in the world of show tunes. Unexpectedly, one of last season’s most acclaimed new musicals, “The Band’s Visit,” did not feature flashy choreography or cathartic 11 o’clock belters. Based on the 2007 art house film of the same title, the show, which played Off Broadway at the Atlantic Theater, is a low-key charmer in which looking at someone in silence carries as much emotional weight as delivering one of David Yazbek’s insidiously catchy songs.

Mastering both was Katrina Lenk, as the sultry owner of the lone cafe in a dead-end Israeli town, who has a brief encounter with a group of marooned Egyptian musicians, led by Tony Shalhoub. Fortunately, Ms. Lenk is now getting ready to reprise her performance at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, where the show starts Broadway previews on Oct. 7.

Over lunch at the Israeli restaurant Balaboosta in Manhattan a couple of weeks after the closing of Broadway’s “Indecent,” in which she played the passionate prostitute Menke, Ms. Lenk was almost as wry as her “Band’s Visit” character, Dina. Describing how she got cast, she simply said, with a shrug, “I went in, got a callback, then got the part.”