‘Come From Away’ took flight at Playhouse in 2015
This week, in a tour stop postponed by the pandemic, the Tony Award-winning musical “Come From Away” is making its first visit to San Diego since it was launched at La Jolla Playhouse in 2015.
The touring production runs May 17-22, 2022, at the San Diego Civic Theatre. Union-Tribune theater critic James Hebert was at that June 2015 premiere. Here are the first few paragraphs of his original review.
From The San Diego Union-Tribune, Saturday, June 13, 2015:
If ever a musical conjured a miracle, it might be this: Persuading a playgoer that a layover can be a life-changer.
But then, it’s not your everyday airport pit stop that’s depicted in “Come From Away,” the folksy, fact-based new La Jolla Playhouse show whose compelling sense of uplift could levitate a jet or two.
When terror forced airliners to find terra firma on 9/11 — as all U.S.-bound air traffic was ordered to land — 38 of those planes descended on Gander, Newfoundland.
Um, where? Exactly. As one passenger in “Come From Away” is heard saying by phone: “We’re safe on the ground here in Iceland.”
Soon, though, that ground will begin to rumble and shift beneath the refugees’ feet. And it’s only partly due to the primal thrum of percussion that courses through such numbers as “Welcome to Newfoundland,” the stirring opener to this world-premiere work.
It has more to do with the big-hearted way the citizens of this remote Canadian outpost receive the legions of “plane people” — feeding them, housing them, consoling them and, in the process, offering fresh perspective on harried lives.
Reeling from the terror attacks but relieved of cabin pressure, the passengers are free to move about the tiny town and maybe contemplate altering their own personal flight paths.
“Come From Away,” written and composed by the Canadian husbandand-wife team of Iren Sankoff and David Hein, is an inspired and highly original effort whose structure is wed beautifully to its story. (Like virtually any new musical, it also has its hiccups.)
Playhouse artistic chief Christopher Ashley directs the show with a graceful yet propulsive flow; the Newfoundland-inspired music, which sounds to these ears like a blend of Celtic and country, is played nearly nonstop for long stretches of the 100-minute, intermissionless production.
Music director-conductor Ian Eisendrath’s dynamic onstage rock ensemble emphatically has the chops (not to mention the fiddles, bodhrans, Irish bouzoukis and uilleann pipes).
So does the cast, which includes a couple of Broadway stars (Tony Award nominee Chad Kimball of the Playhousebred “Memphis” and Jenn Colella of “If/Then”), but is remarkable for its feel of a cohesive ensemble, in a show that has no traditional leads.
That’s precisely in keeping with the modest, egalitarian ethos of the townspeople, whom the actors portray along with the newcomers (all 14 play multiple characters).
FOLKSY ‘COME FROM AWAY’ EARNS ITS WINGS FACT-BASED MUSICAL MAKING WORLD PREMIERE AT LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE IS SOLID, COMPELLING