Away we go
Come From Away is an ‘outstandingly sensible’ production that couldn’t have a better ending
Come From Away Royal Alexandra Theatre, Toronto
Iconfess that I approached Come from Away with some skepticism. A musical about how the people of Gander, Nfld., opened up their hearts and homes to the 38 planeloads of people stranded there as a result of 9/ 11 has an inspiring premise. But once the situation had been established, where could the show go from there? I anticipated a lot of sentimental filler, perhaps focusing on made- up romances between residents and visitors. I could not have been more wrong. Come from Away is indeed a heartwarming show, but there’s almost nothing sentimental about it. Both in its substance and in its treatment, it’s outstandingly sensible. It drives but it doesn’t rush. The cleverest but also the most honest thing about it may be the way it deploys its cast of 12. The opening number shows the people of Gander dealing with their own issues; there’s a school bus driver strike, and the mayor is trying to get both sides to — in his own recurring phrase — come to the table. Then the news breaks.
We switch to the inside of one of the planes; the crew aren’t clear about why they’ve been diverted and the passengers of course know even less. The scene change is effected, instantly, by a re- arrangement of chairs. The performers don’t have to change; the same actors who were at the council meeting (held in Tim Hortons) are now in the air. And so it goes throughout the evening, sometimes back and forth in the course of a single song. It’s ingenious, it’s invigorating, and it’s never confusing.
It was a rewarding decision to devote so much time to the fears and confusion of the new arrivals while they’re still airborne and then for the long hours when they’re waiting on the tarmac. It builds tension and lets us get to know them. Meanwhile, we also get better acquainted with the townspeople, as they realize the full scope of the situation, making multiple frenzied trips to scour the shelves of Shoppers Drug Mart in anticipation of each possible future demand. Irene Sankoff and David Hein, who wrote the book and score ( there’s more score than book) assembled their show from interviews they conducted with both locals and with those from away. They give us both groups in microcosm. The passengers and crew of one plane stand in for those of all 38. The Gander citizens we meet represent the town’s population of 9,000. They have to play host to a sudden influx — from all over, but predominantly American — of 7.000. That the two parties are almost equal in number makes the interchangeable casting even more apt.
It’s appropriate, then, that this is a joint Canadian-American production (and bound for Broadway), the authors from here, most of the production team from there. The director, Christopher Ashley, has staged the show superbly, much aided by Beowulf Boritt’s simple set design and Howell Binkley’s evocative lighting. I fancy that it would be poetically just if the casting were to be split equally between the two countries; in fact there are three times as many of them than there of us. But everyone on stage is so good that it’s pointless to quibble, let alone to rank them in any order of merit.
It’s best just to list them: of the three Canadians, Petrina Bromley ( this year’s Stratford Rosalind) plays an SPCA official, passionately concerned with the welfare of the animals on board, and especially with the incipient birth of Gander’s first ever bonobo chimpanzee. Lee MacDougall is, impeccably, a British passenger who’s one half of the love- plot that the show does in fact provide. Astrid Van Wieren gives an overflowing but disciplined performance as a teacher who takes instant charge of what amounts to an impromptu refugee centre.
Of the nine Americans, Geno Carr plays the top local cop. Jenn Colella is the airline captain who, as befits her rank, gets the one solo number in a score otherwise made up of ensembles; it’s a good song about her pride in becoming American Airlines’ first female pilot and her horror at how the planes she loves have been turned into vehicles of destruction. She also talks of how planes suffer when they’re grounded too long, not something that would have occurred to most of us. Joel Hatch, rubicund and conscientious, is the image of a small- town mayor, and indeed gets to play a whole quick- change succession of them as the influx spreads out to neighbouring townships. Rodney Hicks is a black American who can hardly believe that none of these hospitable strangers wants to kill or even rob him. Kendra Kassebaum is a local TV reporter who comes to cover a strike and stays, wide- eyed, to bear witness to history. Chad Kimball is a gay man named Kevin, travelling with his partner, also named Kevin; they say that once this seemed cute but is now tiresome, which is a pretty good description of how their whole relationship is presented. Caesar Samayoa is the other Kevin, and also plays a Muslim exposed to the new distrust of his fellow passengers; also, as the new security comes in, to a humiliating body-search witnessed with disquiet by the lady captain. Q. Smith plays an elderly woman from New York who bonds with the teacher over each of them having a son who is a firefighter — and who lives in fear when the full implications of the day’s inferno dawn on her. Sharon Wheatley is the other half of the love-interest, a Texan whose involvement with the Englishman has to be true because nobody would dare to make it up
All these characters, plus the subsidiary ones that all the actors take on, add to a mosaic of people coming together and recoiling from differences. A favourite moment: a bus comes to a dead halt when it encounters a moose in the road; happens all the time, the newcomers are informed. The atmosphere is warm, but never insultingly folksy. The score, mostly tight and rockish, goes traditional for one ebullient sequence celebrating the appointing of four of the visitors as honorary Newfoundlanders. It’s one of the few times when the show stops for applause. Otherwise it barrels seamlessly through, without an intermission. It’s the only musical I’ve seen in which the band are granted their own curtain-call. They play on through it, 10 of them, each in turn taking a solo. There couldn’t be a better ending.