Feelgood musical is worth a Gander
IT’S THE most heartwarming musical on Broadway — and it could become one of the biggest, and unlikeliest, hits of the year.
Come From Away is the story of the planes diverted from the U.S. to Gander in Newfoundland, Canada, on 9/11.
Husband-and-wife composers and lyricists Irene Sankoff and David Hein wrote the show, which opens officially on Sunday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, after visiting Gander in 2011 for the tenth anniversary commemoration of the day the ‘plane people’ arrived.
Nearly 7,000 passengers, pilots and flight crew descended on the remote Newfoundland town on September 11, 2001, after American air space was closed to all flights.
‘People changed their lives out there,’ Hein told me. ‘Some had fallen in love, and the experience affected them profoundly.’
The couple flew to Gander using money from a Canadian government grant. Hein noted that they were able to expand their funding, because the locals wouldn’t let them stay in hotels. Instead, they invited them into their houses.
That kind of welcoming hospitality is what those travellers who had ‘come from away’ found in Gander, too: the 10,000-strong population opened their homes, civic halls, gyms and hostels to the stranded travellers.
Sankoff and Hein interviewed as many of those involved as they could; and spent years honing and refining their piece to absolute perfection.
I confess that I was, initially, hesitant about seeing Come From Away. But, strictly speaking, it’s not a 9/11 musical at all. Or a Canadian one.
A cast of 12 sing and dance and recount tales from scores of folks: locals and plane people.
It’s going to give the masterpiece Dear Evan Hansen a run for its money at the Tony Awards in June, that’s for sure.
I sat next to Cameron Mackintosh, per chance, and we — and everybody else — were on our feet, roaring our approval at the end. Many in the crowd were weeping.
This really should come from away to London — I’m thinking somewhere like the Young Vic.