Bob and Sandy Nesoff: June 29, 2017
No one will ever forget the tragedy of 911, not even those born in the days and years after the cowardly attack on the World Trade Center. But it is a fact of human nature that when darkness falls, someone will proffer a helping hand; a hand of friendship.
To prevent any further attack American airspace was closed and flights were grounded. Of the thousands of aircraft, there were 38 rerouted to the small Canadian town of Gander in Newfoundland.
On those planes were some 7,000 stranded passengers. They were lost. They had no idea what was happening or what was going to happen to them. What came about was the spirit of friendship from the Canadian people who took it upon themselves to offer that hand of friendship.
How do you bring lightheartedness and fun in a musical from death and destruction? How do you make a theater audience laugh, smile and clap their hands when the backstory is a tragedy?
Broadway’s Come From Away does just that in a production that tells the story of human kindness from the residents of the small village to thousands of strangers they have never met.
“Come From Away” is an uplifting musical that tells the story of what happened when 9,000 Gander, Newfoundland residents took it as their responsibility to lessen the burden and impact on the travelers. They set up places to sleep, provided food and took many of them into their homes.
The possibility of this story becoming a sappy retelling of the terrible time could have hung like a cloud over the production, but husband and wife writing team of Irene Sankoff and David Hein have managed an uplifting tale of human kindness and the ethic of the Canadians.
“The people of Gander opened their homes and their hearts,” said Hein. “They didn’t have to do that.
This is not a play about a tragedy. It’s a story about good people reaching out to others and lifting their spirits.
Hein and Sankoff set about an impossible task of a production with 12 people bringing to life the 16,000 people who crowded into the small village. Each plays multiple roles and they do so with aplomb.
Emotions are mixed and trade between humor and sadness but the show never becomes maudlin or a downer. Sankoff and Hein manage to keep an even keel although their only other experience was a show with the unlikely name My Mother’s Jewish Jewish Lesbian Wiccan Wedding. Hardly a precursor for Come From Away, but they do it with charm.
There is very little in the way of solo numbers with most songs group numbers, such as Welcome to the Rock. The Rock is the nickname locals call Gander.
Most such isolated small towns usually are pretty staid, so when the mix of passengers: a gay couple, both named Kevin; a female airline pilot; a divorced Texan who “bonds with a British oil tycoon and a jaded New Yorker who is suspicious of the motives of the locals. And then there is the Muslim chef who is treated with suspicion by everyone.
The audience is drawn not only into the wariness of the passengers suddenly stranded on a strange, small island far from home but into the goodness of the residents. Audience members will not come away from “Come From Away” with anything but a smile on their faces.
The reception wasn’t perfect, but the visitors and locals got it done. They spent five days together and some shared a bond that has lasted over the years. Come From Away beautifully brings the audience into the amazing act of 16,000 strangers Coming together.”
Perhaps William Butler Yeats said it best: “A stranger is only a friend you have yet to meet.”
“Come From Away” is at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. The show runs about 100 minutes without an intermission. But no one seemed to notice.
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