https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/theater/come-from-away-review.html
A thrilling and multi-dimensional performance set in the small town of Gander in Newfoundland. The day is 911 when thousands of airline passengers were diverted/landed/detained in a village of 6,000 inhabitants. For the next five days, there are 16,000 people and the villagers respond with tremendous generosity and care for the emergency conditions required to house, feed and care for this vast number of "guests." I also deeply appreciated that the show ended with a final musical performance by the musicians - from a fictionalized world, the reality of great music and talented musicians on stage drove the final emotions deftly home.
IRENE SANKOFF AND DAVID HEIN
BOOK, MUSIC, LYRICS
This quote from the review in the NYTimes:
Mr. Ashley and his musical staging director, Kelly Devine, have steered their multicast, 12-member ensemble through a rushing, sung-and-spoken narrative that has them changing parts (and accents) on a Canadian dime.
The performers are required to embody the good citizens of Gander (and nearby villages), a small town with a big airport in Northeast Canada, where 38 planes were forced to land after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The same cast plays passengers and crew members.
...
“Come From Away,” in other words, is smarter than it first appears. The show starts off in a grating key of deep earnestness, as a chorus of Ganderians step to the edge of the stage to deliver an anthem of hearty regional identity. (“They say no man is an island, but an island makes a man.”)
But as it proceeds, the show — based on interviews with the people who inspired it — covers a vast expanse of sensitive material with a respect for its complexity.
...
Amid the surreal blur of activity, people fall in love, break up, learn of the deaths of loved ones and realize that the world will never, ever look the same again.
