Come from Away delivers more than a feel-good night out

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This article was published 26/10/2022 (1407 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The story doesn’t seem custom-made for the stage: after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 38 planes were diverted and forced to land in Gander, N.L.

The thousands of passengers stranded in the remote Canadian outpost were greeted with an astonishing display of hospitality, with the whole area mobilizing to feed, house and clothe them for five days.

Inspiring, yes, but hardly fodder for musical theatre.

Gander mayor Claude Elliott told the Free Press in 2018, “I just couldn’t figure out how they were going to take sandwiches and blankets and pillows and put that into a musical.”

Well, married Canadian playwrights Irene Sankoff and David Hein pulled it off and then some. Come From Away — named for the nickname given to mainlanders in Newfoundland — played to standing-room-only crowds throughout its five-year Broadway run and garnered rapturous reviews.

The current Broadway Across Canada production at the Centennial Concert Hall is a welcome reminder that there is good in the world. Over the course of 100 or so minutes (no intermission), its specific story of a community opening its heart to strangers lets us believe the general myth of Canadian acceptance.

But it’s more than a feel-good night out; it’s also a stirring example of theatrical brio.

The Equity production features a cast of 12 — many of whom appeared in the lengthy Broadway and Toronto runs of the show — portraying myriad townspeople and “plane people,” often with nothing more than a different hat and a shift in accent to delineate them.

The sung-spoken narrative is rapid-fire, echoing the pace of an emergency situation. There’s sentimentality here, to be sure, but no wallowing; just when you think things are going to get goopy or maudlin, Sankoff and Hein inject humour or drama. (In the former category, James Earl Jones II is a standout, while Danielle K. Thomas’s worried mother Hannah delivers pure pain in her song I Am Here.)

The songs, while not really hum-at-home tunes, are a blend of boisterous fun — Screech In makes particularly good use of the band’s Irish-style instrumentation — and moving pathos.

Come From Away doesn’t shy away from portraying the anti-Muslim sentiment that was amplified by the events of Sept. 11 (though it could stand to stress it a bit more, frankly) and Ali Momen has a gutting scene where he is searched at the airport.

Many of the characters are based on real people, including the aforementioned Mayor Claude (Kevin Carolan), police constable Oz Fudge (Harter Clingman), Legion secretary Beulah Cooper (Julie Johnson) and pilot Beverley Bass, whose experience of becoming the first female captain of an American Airlines commercial plane is the basis of the song Me and the Sky.

Owing to illness, about midway through the show Marika Aubrey as Beverley was smoothly replaced with standby actress Cailin Stadnyk, who did a bang-up job with Beverley’s soaring number (oddly, Aubrey herself was called in off a national tour to fill in at the Broadway production in December 2021 when eight of the 12 cast members fell ill with COVID).

It must be said that, compared with the work’s 2018 Winnipeg debut at Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, where it had a sold-out run before moving to Toronto’s Elgin Theatre, parts feel a bit perfunctory; it doesn’t have quite the same emotional heft upon second viewing.

However, not constantly wiping away tears also gives you the chance to really appreciate how the show does so much with so little. Tony winner Beowulf Boritt’s set, flanked by stylized trees that hide the lively eight-person band, is not much more than some wooden chairs, two tables and a turntable, which nonetheless convey a plane, a bus, a pub and a Tim Hortons, while the precise lighting design by Howell Binkley aids in the illusion.

Come From Away is frantically paced and impeccably choreographed, but so seamlessly presented that it never feels like either. Characters and scenes change in the blink of an eye — Christopher Ashley, who won a Tony for his direction, keeps the machine well-oiled — but despite the briefness of each encounter, the humanity of the characters is captured, whether it’s an unlikely couple falling in love, or another relationship falling apart.

It’s interesting to ponder how the work will land as its audience gets younger — currently, a lot of the heavy emotional lifting is done by the viewer, who brings his or her own experience of 9/11 to the table — but Come From Away’s message of kindess feels timeless.

jill.wilson@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @dedaumier