Come From Away greeted with raves of Broadway critics
Pre-Tony Award buzz is the result of 9/11 musical’s feel-good vibe and current U.S. political climate
Positive reviews from some of New York City’s most respected theatre critics for Come From Away, the Canadian musical inspired by post-Sept. 11events, are creating the kind of buzz that leads to long runs and all-important Tony Award nominations.
The feel-good musical, about Newfoundlanders opening their homes to U.S. citizens stranded there when American air space was closed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, made its Broadway debut on Sunday night.
Bob Martin, who co-wrote and starred in The Drowsy Chaperone, the only real Canadian hit in Broadway history, said the reviews are “definitely good enough” to expect the show will get some serious love from Tony voters.
“There was a very strong review in the New York Times and that’s extremely important. Ben Brantley’s not easy to please,” said Martin, who in 2006 received a Tony nomination for best actor and won a Tony, along with Don McKellar, for best book of a musical.
Martin said Come From Away, written by Canadians Irene Sankoff and David Hein, is “really well-positioned” for a number of reasons, including the election of Donald Trump and the climate of division and fear it has engendered.
“It’s a singing reminder that when things are at their worst, people can be at their best.” JOE DZIEMIANOWICZ NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
“The thing ( Come From Away) has going for it is the thing that you can’t manufacture. It takes on average seven years to develop a Broadway musical so you really can’t predict what the zeitgeist will be like when it finally comes out and Come From Away has perfect timing. It could not have come in at a better time,” said Martin, now a writer and producer who spends half the year in New York. “New Yorkers are not happy right now and there’s sense of defeat (about) the cruelty of the political climate right now. So here’s this show that shows the power of human kindness and the strength of being inclusive. It’s perfect, it’s exactly what people want to see.”
Martin has five Broadway shows in development and said Tony voters — many of whom are in the theatre business — will find much to like in the musical.
“Many of the Tony voters have regional theatres,” Martin said. “They’re really interested in what will tour well. Come From Away is a portable show, it’s a small ensemble, it’s a short musical. It really will play well in regional theatres.”
Toronto entertainment lawyer and independent producer Derrick Chua agreed that the reviews are solid and that the show has the right “buzz” to get the attention of Tony voters.
“I’m thrilled by (the reviews). I think Come From Away has got a pretty strong chance,” said Chua, an award-winning theatre producer who served as president of the Toronto Fringe Festival.
But Chua noted this is a particularly tough year, with 13 new shows — the most since the 1970s — vying for best musical in the 2016/17 season. The Tony Awards will be presented on June 11. Among the largely positive reviews: “It’s a singing reminder that when things are at their worst, people can be at their best,” wrote Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News.
The musical is set in Gander, N.L., some 2,400 kilometres from Ground Zero, and centres on “the plane peo- ple” who had to spend five days there after U.S. air space was shut down.
Dziemianowicz and the other reviewers couldn’t thank enough the New found landers who cheerfully opened their homes to stranded strangers — and in some cases their pet dogs, cats and monkeys.
“They opened their homes, made small acts of kindness and let flow liquor for an out-there ritual that involves kissing a fish to make non-New found landers (‘come from aways’) honorary citizens,” Dziemianowicz wrote. “It’s a story that sings.”
Broadway critics noted that at first glance, Sept. 11 is a dicey topic for a feel-good musical in New York City.
“Come From Away sounds like a show that most New Yorkers would run a city mile to avoid,” wrote Ben Brantley of the Times, adding that it’s somehow irresistible all the same.
“Try, if you must, to resist the gale of goodwill that blows out of Come From Away, the big bear hug of a musical that opened on Sunday night” at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, he wrote. “But even the most stalwart cynics may have trouble staying dry-eyed during this portrait of heroic hospitality under extraordinary pressure.”
Brantley credited the Canadianborn production with pushing “so many emotional buttons that you wind up feeling like an accordion.” He added that the musical might never have made it to Broadway, if not for the timing. “But we are now in a moment in which millions of immigrants are homeless and denied entry to increasingly xenophobic nations, including the United States. A tale of an insular populace that doesn’t think twice before opening its arms to an international throng of strangers automatically acquires a near-utopian nimbus,” Brantley wrote.
“So does the reminder that there was a time when much of the Western world united in the face of catastrophe. And when politicians who have since become the butts of jaded jokes (hey there, Rudolph Giuliani and Tony Blair) stood tall as leaders of substance.”
Frank Scheck of the Hollywood Reporter was equally effusive, writing: “The true-life story that inspired the new musical Come From Away would seem like the stuff of a Frank Capra movie.” It’s sentimental stuff, he wrote, but it feels necessary in “these politically fractious times.”
Martin said the musical is getting the praise it deserves.
“I can’t tell you how proud I am of these guys. It’s a hard thing to accomplish and they’re very nice people,” he said.