Seeing his story on stage was ‘surreal’
Tom McKeon’s experiences helped shape character Bob in the hit Broadway musical
“(The creators and I) talked for about two hours. But I had no idea that anything I’d said would end up in the show.” TOM MCKEON
NEW YORK— In the hit musical Come From Away, the stories told by the character Bob are a comic standout. He’s one of the “plane people” who finds himself grounded in Gander, N.L., in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Bob, played by Rodney Hicks, becomes the main conduit for New York skepticism in the show: He worries out loud about where he can hide his wallet and reacts incredulously when he’s dispatched to borrow barbecues from locals’ backyards (“Take their grills? Someone’s gonna shoot me!”).
A big part of what makes the Tonynominated musical a powerful viewing experience is knowing that its content comes from real life: Creators Irene Sankoff and David Hein based the show on interviews with plane people and residents of Gander and nearby towns.
Earlier this month, I got to meet “Bob” — or close enough. While Bob is a composite of several people Sankoff and Hein interviewed, 58-yearold New Jersey native Tom McKeon is one of the principal sources of the character.
I invited McKeon to see Come From Away, curious about what it’s like to see yourself represented onstage.
McKeon was at a big transition point in his life around that time: 42 and single, he was moving home to New Jersey after 13 years in California. An engineer by profession, he had saved up money to work on a writing project about the Northern Irish Troubles and was flying back from a research trip on that fateful day.
Now married with two small kids, he lives in western New Jersey and works in risk engineering for an insurance company.
He’s telling me all this as we make our way to our seats and I’m struck by his incognito status. No one recognizes him — why would they? — but it’s going to be him up on that stage, or some of his lightly fictionalized experiences, at least. I resist the temptation to tell the people beside me they’re sitting near one of the stars of the show.
This viewing wasn’t a “big reveal” for McKeon; he’d already seen the show four times. His first time, he bought tickets to a preview performance and “snuck in” without telling Sankoff and Hein he was going to be there.
“We were sitting in the second or third row centre, and I was hitting my wife’s knee every time something I said to David and Irene was in the show. There were at least 30 things, almost all from Bob, but a few from other characters. It was really surreal.” Sankoff and Hein approached McKeon six years ago on the recommendation of Derm Flynn, then and now the mayor of Appleton, N.L., one of the nearby hamlets that took in stranded passengers.
Flynn and his wife put up McKeon and several others in their basement. The bits in the show in which Flynn and others enjoy Bob’s duty-free whiskey are all true, McKeon recalls: “All I had with me was my computer and a bottle of Jameson’s.”
The two men are now fast friends. McKeon’s been back to Newfoundland several times, and is in frequent touch with his host through email and phone calls. “I’d do anything for Derm,” he says.
And so, when Sankoff and Hein got in touch, while he was “taken aback” by the idea of a musical about Gander and Sept. 11, McKeon agreed to meet them. “They asked great questions; we talked for about two hours. But I had no idea that anything I’d said would end up in the show.”
As we watch the performance, McKeon controls himself and only elbows me a few times. Afterwards, we have an appointment to meet the actor Hicks for a photo op and, thrillingly, McKeon knows the insider’s route to backstage.
Within minutes of the curtain call, we’re standing in the middle of a buzzing group of producers, artists and their friends and family.
I’m introduced to Randy Adams, the show’s lead producer, and cocreator Hein.
Hein’s kindness toward his interview subject is striking: In the hubbub, McKeon forgets to get his coat from the cloakroom and it’s Hein who goes to fetch it while McKeon and Hicks pose for the photo.
The journey to make the show has been so long and personal, Hein explains, that “it’s beyond friends at this point. We’re almost this massive family, with everyone so interconnected.”
Over a post-show drink with McKeon (and yes, he orders a Jameson’s), I ask him about Bob’s — and his — initial skepticism when faced with his hosts’ overwhelming friendliness. He says he recognizes in Bob his own tendency to “try to be funny” to cover up fear. “It was a genuinely tense situation. The first 48 hours after the planes hit there was no reason to trust anybody.
“You’re just not prepared to let your guard down. It took a while. It was off-putting to be so welcomed into people’s homes. I think that was the shocking thing, seeing how open they were.”
In the show, we learn that not every pilot told their passengers what was happening while their planes were still in the air. “There’s a character who says, ‘I fly a lot and I knew we were in trouble,’ and that was me,” McKeon says. “The plane was literally nose down to the ground and the captain came on saying there are jet fighters in the air, America’s been attacked.”
Did he panic? “A little bit, but I think knowing the truth was better . . . I was in the navy six years, in some tense situations, but I don’t know if that had a lot to do with it. It was probably more shock than anything else.”
Some of the plane people express guilt in the show that they have a good time in Newfoundland despite the broader circumstances. McKeon explains some of those complex feelings.
“The weather was beautiful; you woke up and it was like being in the country. People were so pleasant, food was everywhere, we were safe . . . It was an atmosphere almost like you’d get at a funeral where you appreciate that something so bad is happening and it’s like . . . let me take some appreciation for what is going on around me.”
McKeon has held back from telling most of his friends and family the extent to which he’s depicted in the show, but he says the whole experience has been gratifying, not to mention glamorous. He clearly enjoys recounting the highlights: “From the first show, not expecting to go backstage, to being called up for the curtain call when the Prime Minister was here and then meeting him,” to not one but two opening-night parties.
“Being in the middle of it is humbling. I’m humbled by it all. And very, very happy for David and Irene. Seeing a big show put together has been amazing for me.” At the Theatre With . . . is an occasional series in which Karen Fricker brings people with specialist perspectives to performances.