Come from Away
★★★★★ Energetic
Playhouse: Tue 17 – Sat 21 Sept 2024
Review by Thom Dibdin
There is an energy and buzz of vitality to Come from Away, touring to the Playhouse this week (tickets) before transferring to Glasgow next week (tickets), which belies the musical’s potentially saccharine nature.
This surely, is the most unlikely of musicals – about an equally unlikely but true life event. When the Twin Towers were struck on September 11, 2001 the United States closed its airspace and all planes in the air over the Atlantic had to divert. 38 landing at Gander, Newfoundland.
Sara Poyzer and company. Pic: Craig Sugden
It wasn’t so much that 38 planes suddenly descended on the airport but the 7,000 odd passengers on those planes. The airport was once used as a refuelling stop for transatlantic flights, so little problem there. But for the remote town of 10,000 souls, that influx of people from over 100 countries proved a real challenge.
Those were, it must be remembered, quite extraordinary times. Yet while the world watched the tragedy of the terrorist act, as flights crashed into the seemingly invincible towers in real time, the internet and mobile phone technology was not as it is now. Information flowed, but not as fast – or as reliably.
Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s book, music and lyrics, successfully capture the sheer enormity of what happened in those days. The chaos and fear as events unfolded, the questioning at what scale they might reach. And it does so with that oh-so-simple trick of making if personal; picking out individuals to follow through the crisis.
unexpected guests
Not only that, they are several steps removed from the heart of what was going on – just as we are now. So necessary and dramatically logical explanations for them, also help us to understand the feelings of that time.
The real heart here lies with the community of Gander in Newfoundland, who mobilised as one to look after their unexpected guests.
Full company. Pic: Craig Sugden
It’s this feel-good element which drives the show. The lengths to which the whole town went, to ensure first that the confused travellers could find somewhere to sleep and wash and eat – and then to create some kind of entertainment for them as hours stretched to days.
You can imagine just how cloying such a story could be. However, Christopher Ashley’s incessantly driving direction ensures that this never happens. While the live band under associate MD Phil Cornwell (on press night) are visible in the wings and oft-times jumping on stage to help push things on.
It’s maybe a shade too fast for those whose ears are getting older. But it is all still beautifully clear as it packs those four or five days into 100 minutes, straight through, of spoken and sung narrative. Finally letting up as the travellers and townsfolk meet up to look back on the events a decade later.
ensemble piece
This is a wonderful ensemble piece, with a 12-strong cast multi-rolling to create a whole host of passengers and townspeople. Each actor not only creating several characters (helped massively by Toni-Leslie James’s clever costumes) but also giving them depth and a journey across the whole show.
None more so than key character Beverley Bass, the pilot of one of the planes. Although, like most characters, she is a dramatic composite, amalgamating several pilot’s experiences, her big number Me and the Sky is a true reflection of Bass’s life as a groundbreaking female pilot.
Kirsty Hoiles, Daniel Crowder and company. Pic: Craig Sugden
Sara Poyzer plays her with a delicacy and strength. She is both commanding, as a pilot should be, and reflective, as she seeks to find out what has happened to her friend and colleague Charles Burlingame: pilot of the plane which crashed into the Pentagon. Poyzer’s Me and the Sky is a rare poignant pause in the narrative flow.
Daniel Crowder and Kirsty Hoiles create one of the musical’s strongest through-lines, as the two secretly lonely divorcees, the English Nick and the Texan Diane. There is a real humanity to the portrayals that pulls you through the hard stuff of what is going on around. While their The Dover Fault and Stop the World duets leaves you cheering for their future happiness.
The townspeople of Gander clearly take the central role. Nicholas Pound is commanding as the mayor, Claude, turning the ice-hockey rink into the biggest ever cold-store; Oliver Jacobson has a laconic take on the local policeman, while Amanda Henderson is all bustling – I can do it all – as teacher Beaulah.
tender contrast
It’s Beulah’s friendship with passenger Hannah, which provides the second big through-line and link with the events in New York. Both have sons who are firefighters and Angeline Bell, depping for Bree Smith, is a fragile Hannah, seeking news of her son – in a quite tender contrast to the gung-ho Beulah.
Part of the real life events in pre-texting days was the reliance of people on their local media. Natasha J Barnes as Janice, who was on her first job as a radio reporter, combines suitable naivety with the necessary descriptive elements to give visual flesh to the events she is reporting on.
Full company. Pic: Craig Sugden
There is so much going on, however, that many of the brilliantly created incidental characters serve more to help flesh out the narrative than provide their own dramatic arc.
Mark Dugdale and Jamal Zulfiqar are cases in point. Both as gay couple, the Kevins, and with Dugdale who doubles as union leader Garth in the midst of a bus strike and Zulfiqar as Egyptian chef Ali, whose Muslim heritage leads to Islamophobic discrimination as the passenger re-board their planes.
There are moments of huge levity – when a squadron of red rubber-gloved surgeons volunteer to clean out the overflowing toilets for example. And some which serve to provide a deeper social commentary such as Dale Mathurin as passenger, Bob, who is black, overcoming his city nerves towards a rural community.
rough-hewn
There is schmaltz, to be honest. Holly Ann Butler (standing in for Rosie Glossop on press night) helps provide plenty “ah” moments as Bonnie, the SPCA animal hospital manager who was more concerned about the animals on the flights – including a pair of rare Bonobo monkeys – than the passengers.
Beowulf Boritt’s rough-hewn set seems to hint more at a wooden barn or warm forest glade than the cold, wide-open wilderness of Newfoundland. But its open nature and Howell Binkley’s precise and imaginative lighting really help the story burl along, from cabin to passenger hall; between folk’s houses and church halls.
A rare piece of emotionally mature but uplifting musical theatre, which is all the better for its portrayal of real people in an extraordinary time.
Running time: One hour and 40 minutes (no interval)
Playhouse, 18-22 Greenside Place Cambridge St, EH1 3AA
Tue 17 – Sat 21 September 2024
Evenings: 7.30 pm; Matinees Wed, Sat 2.30 pm
Tickets and details: Book here
Glasgow King’s Theatre, 297 Bath St, Glasgow G2 4JN
Tue 24 – Sat 28 September 2024
Evenings: 7.30pm; Mats: Wed, Thurs, Sat: 2.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.
ENDS
