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The most rewarding of these are probably Nick and Diane (Lee MacDougall and Sharon Wheatley), middle-aged passengers who meet and fall in love. Individual characters narrate their own stories, too, but there is little time left for any kind of deep character development. Yet almost all the songs are ensemble pieces, and much time is spent telling us the mechanics of caring for so many people all at once: Required to refrigerate the food being trucked in, but not having a refrigerator big enough, they turn the hockey rink into one. It’s an approach they took as well in their first musical, My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding, which is based on Hein’s mother.Ī married couple from Toronto, Sankoff and Hein interviewed both the plane people and the plain people of Gander to come up with Come From Away. Not a single one of the locals in the bar are themselves gay, and when one of the Kevins jokes “There must be something in the water,” one of the locals answers “That’s why I only drink the beer.” It’s a funny line, and an example of Sankoff and Hein’s general approach - even when they seem to be taking risks, they keep it safe and light.

In another pub, a gay couple, both named Kevin, (Chad Kimball and Caesar Samayoa), are cautious about their relationship in what might be redneck territory, but when they let it slip, they discover half the denizens seem to have relatives who are gay. There is a ritual involving the kissing of a codfish and the drinking of a regional rot-gut rum known as Screech in a local pub.

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Much of the humor is milked from the culture clash of the cosmopolitan passengers and their provincial hosts, which reminded me of the old TV series Northern Exposure, right down to a couple of jokes about moose. And Come From Away is certainly feel-good – also rhythmic, well staged, often funny. The answer seems to be yes, judging by the enthusiastic embrace of this musical. The question thus arises: Are we so battered by the trauma of actual events that the only stage depictions we welcome about them are feel-good entertainment?.

This is not really a “9/11 musical,” then, but it will certainly be seen that way. The Canadian song writing team of Irene Sankoff and David Hein are so eager to please that Come From Away keeps a safe distance from the horror of 9/11.Ĭome From Away focuses on the kindness of strangers, and how they ease the fear and inconvenience of the “plane people,” some 1,500 miles away from any real danger. So I was worried that Come from Away would, in contemporary parlance, be triggering. When an out-of-town friend visiting New York recently bought me a ticket to the 9/11 Memorial Museum, I couldn’t bring myself to go. But now that it’s in New York, it has to deal with people like me.Īs I wrote on the 15 th anniversary of September 11 th,I was across the street from the Twin Towers on the morning of Septemwhen they were attacked. The production has gained fans for its foot-stomping Celtic-flavored music, the tight ensemble work of its 12-member cast, and its heartwarming view of humanity, as it’s traveled from La Jolla to Seattle to D.C. “Come From Away” tells the story of the 9,000 residents of Gander, Newfoundland who took care of some 7,000 passengers and crew of 38 airplanes that were forced to land at the local airport because of the Septemattacks.

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