OnScreen Review: “Come From Away”
September 2021 is the perfect moment for the Broadway success“Come From Away” to get a national audience courtesy of a pro-shot adaptation from Apple. Yes, the release is timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the horrific watershed moment in American history which acts as the inciting incident for this Canadian import. It also feels like a perfectly apropos moment because this 2001-set musical feels more relevant than ever. “Come From Away” is about healing a national wound with kindness. It is about hospitality and hope, how simple actions can have profound consequences, how much more similar we are than different. It’s a message we need in any medium.
Creators of the 2017 hit “Come From Away” – which I’ve never seen on stage – were initially planning a musical film adaptation to be shot on location in Newfoundland when COVID halted production. In a genius move, they pivoted, reunited the cast for a few nights in May, brought in a vaccinated audience of 9/11 survivors and front-line workers, and filmed the show live on stage. I hope more productions will follow in its footsteps. Perhaps “Waitress” or “Hadestown” next? With few exceptions, I’d almost always rather see a filmed version of a live play than a mediocre cinematic adaptation where theatrical conventions are retrofitted for a wildly different medium.
I can’t speak for what the on-location movie would have been, but “Come From Away’s” staging and staginess are its strongest suit by a Gander mile. It’s a story that could easily be saccharine or formulaic; something more suited to one of those Good News Facebook videos or a Steve Hartman news kicker than a 105-minute musical. But Christopher Ashley’s Tony-winning direction is so fun, so brisk, so thoughtful, so well-thought-out and so specific, it elevates every moment without even a whiff of ostentatiousness. He makes use of every body onstage, every beat, to create unique stage pictures. It’s bracingly theatrical but also familiar; one of those high-end restaurant mac and cheeses with imported gruyère and shaved truffles. Humble ideas are dolled up by great execution and attention to detail – a dish that goes down so easily you don’t notice any flaws until the plate is clean.
That is all to say that I’m overjoyed audiences around the world can see this winsome Broadway show from the comfort of their couch the way it was meant to be seen. Ashley doesn’t do anything particularly new or inventive with his on-screen treatment – it lacks the visual panache of Disney’s “Hamilton” film – but he captures the stage show with an unobtrusive lens and well-timed edits. The camera is there to capture a very talented cast tell their story.
Based on true events, “Come From Away” takes place in Gander, “a small place on a giant rock in the ocean.” It’s a quaint, small Canadian town that boast an airport often used as a transatlantic refueling spot. As the towers fell on September 11thand flights were immediately halted, 38 planes made an emergency landing in Gander, leaving 7,000 passengers from around the world as temporary residents. Told in montage form with direct-to-audience addresses, the musical covers five or so days post-9/11. We careen back and forth between the hospitable locals as they plan emergency shelters and the traumatized travelers who find themselves a stranger in a strange land. Since there were thousands stranded in Gander, book-writers Irene Sankoff, and David Hein follow pick out a few “plane people” to follow like a gay couple who worry about being accepted by the locals and a budding romance between a middle-aged Southern woman and a British engineer.
The score, also by Sankoff and Hein, is spry and engaging. It makes ample use of fiddles and acoustic guitars, the musical heartbeat of Gander. There are a few memorable songs, but except for one earworm (“I’m an islander, I am an islander”), the songs all bleed into each other with a pleasant sameness. There’s an enjoyable but formless, workmanlike quality to the score. It sounds good but doesn’t reach for anything truly unexpected; the lyrics sit well in the melodies and tell the story proficiently but are rarely very poetic, masterful, or unique. It’s the kind of score that gets elevated but the production, not the other way around.
Twelve terrific actors – pulled from the current, original, and touring casts – seamlessly inhabit dozens of roles and are uniformly outstanding. Tony-nominee Jenn Colella proves one of the show’s through lines as Beverly Bass, a sturdy pilot, as does Joel Hatch as Gander’s mayor. But the whole cast – Petrina Bromley, De’Lon Grant, Tony LePage (stepping in for Tony-nominee Chad Kimball), Q. Smith, Caesar Samayoa, Astrid Van Wieran, Emily Walton, Jim Walton, Sharon Wheatley, and Paul Whitty – are an ensemble in the truest sense of the word. They each have moments to shine and each makes the varied characters distinct with only the aid of a new jacket or accent.
Sankoff, Hein, and Ashley choose to tell this story with a broad focus, which ends up being a unique selling point for “Come From Away” and one that ultimately hampers its emotional impact. The kaleidoscopic view of humanity, executed by having a small cast portray dozens of people in dozens of locations, perfectly fits the show’s thesis. But it also means we don’t land on any one character long enough to flesh them out and give them real conflict. As a series of individual scenes, it works like gangbusters. The very funny interactions between the passengers stuck on a grounded plane. The growing friendship between two mothers of firemen; the antics of the local ASPCA worker who must care for the pets (and a few monkeys) left onboard the planes. There’s a very moving song where the travelers turn to religion and the score beautifully weaves together the Christian hymn “Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace” with the Jewish prayer “Oseh Shalom Bimromav.” There’s a joyous barnburner of a jig where the travelers and locals (and band) get drunk together at a local bar.
But, for me, it didn’t add up to the emotional wallop I wanted it to. To its credit, the book writers don’t try for a Pollyanna worldview. These characters struggle and face challenges that aren’t over at the end of the story. They include a Muslim man who faces discrimination at the hands of his fellow travelers, culminating in a mortifying strip search. It all feels too cursorily, acknowledging the antithesis of blind friendliness without really digging any deeper. The locals are quirky but without much conflict and we rarely get meaningful glimpses into the more troubled travelers.
Throughout “Come From Away,” especially during that bar scene, I was often reminded of “Once.” The two share similar DNA – Irish-infused music, an onstage band, highly theatrical use of a simple setting – but what makes “Once” more successful (beyond its better score), is that anchoring the shape-shifting ensemble are two complex characters who get revealed throughout the story. It’s the specificity that stays with you. “Once” tells its story with a macro lens, “Come From Away” is all wide-shots.
Yet I can’t say that “Come From Away” doesn’t carve out its own niche with aplomb. For me, the most exciting thing on display isn’t so much the specifics of “Come From Away” but what it represents. Here is a well-made, creatively staged, modern, new, mature musical that’s available for the world to see and to inspire the next generation of theater-makers. One that isn’t based on a famous film and doesn’t rely on gimmicks or effects. So often, the musicals that pass into the wider zeitgeist of pop culture are ones that have been immortalized on screen. Except for “Hamilton,” that’s recently mostly been handsome antiques, a second (or third or fourth) on-screen version of an audience favorite or shlocky, artless jukebox musicals. “Come From Away” may be imperfect, but it perfectly captures what live theater can be. It uses pieces any high school theater department has access to – tables and chairs, costumes you could cull from Goodwill – and uses them in artful, thoughtful, creative ways to tell an original story with something meaningful to say. We could use a lot more of that.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
“Come From Away” will premiere globally on Apple TV+ on Friday, September 10.
Correction: an earlier version of this review misrepresented the number of planes that landed in Gander. It was 38 planes not “over 200” as originally stated.