Feelgood show... inspired by 9/11
THIS Canadian musical import, which opened in London’s West End last night, reminded me of nothing so much as those batty disaster movies satirised by Leslie Nielsen in the Airplane films of the 1980s.
It’s based on real-life accounts of how residents on the island of Newfoundland coped when 7,000 passengers, in 38 planes, were diverted to their small town of Gander after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
What emerges from this is the most relentlessly cheerful and ecstatically wholesome feelgood show I’ve ever seen.
Just like the disaster movies, we have a multi-cultural diaspora with a carefully curated menu of personal problems. A big, affable town mayor (Clive Carter) with a weakness for whiskey, a rookie reporter ( Emma Salvo) nervously hoping to win her spurs, a bickering gay couple called Kevin and Kevin (Jonathan Andrew Hume and David Shannon) and a bashful Brit (Robert Hands) struggling to summon the courage to proposition an American divorcee (Helen Hobson).
The idea is to celebrate the generosity shown towards this overwhelming influx of stranded souls.
It reaches Biblical proportions as the task of feeding the 7,000 evolves into the challenge of providing bedding, showers, telephones and loos for them, too. Not to mention moral support. Later on, it’s beer, barbecues and a barn dance.
One woman is desperate to hear news of her New York fireman son, but apart from that the Twin Towers are barely mentioned. The focus is not on human evil, but human kindness.
This includes the woman from the animal shelter who found a pregnant bonobo ape on one plane.
And no disaster movie would be complete without a priest suffering a crisis of faith – although in this case it’s a Muslim chef, suffering discrimination in the edgy atmosphere of the time. Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s songs are a succession of choral broadsides aimed directly at the audience.
And in a novel twist on a musical’s usual trade in love, longing and heartache, the ensemble of 20 actors pummel us with facts, figures and logistical dilemmas.
Like the Dublin- sounding Newfoundland accent, the music is a version of Irish folk with tin whistles, fiddles and bodhran drums, threatening to turn the show into a Riverdancestyle ceilidh.
No question, it’s an impressive feat to weave so many characters and stories into a jubilant, sometimes poignant, uninterrupted 100 minutes.
If I found it all too hearty, it undoubtedly salvages something sweet and warm from the wreckage of those dark days.