While Dear Evan Hansen got all the love from the Tonys last year (and deservedly so), it was Come From Away that won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical (along with prizes from many other critics groups). It's the story of Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, a small town whose location near the easternmost edge of Canada made it an epicenter of activity in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Flights inbound from Europe were diverted to Gander, almost doubling its effective population in a day and testing the locals in endless ways as they bent over backwards to roll out the welcome mat to a bunch of "come from aways" suddenly stranded with little or nothing.
It's great material for drama. The musical employs a cast of 12 to portray many dozens of characters, locals and travelers, depicting the days before air travel in the U.S. was restored. It's a heartwarming story of unsung heroes and humanity. (The ironies of calling them "unsung" when their story has become a hit musical are not lost on me.) You might expect a heavy, depressing night at the theater, but there's actually a lot of humor in Come From Away (perhaps even too much?), and though the show plays without intermission, it moves along at a brisk pace.
But there's a lot about the musical that left me uncertain at best, if not disappointed. Foremost, the story isn't actually "dramatized" particularly well. The script was purportedly written after its creators, Irene Sankoff and David Hein, heard of the story and traveled to Gander themselves for the 10th anniversary of September 11th, 2001. They interviewed many locals, and many travelers who returned for a reunion, piecing their stories together.
If this sounds like the way you'd make a documentary, then you won't be surprised at the results. I would estimate that more of the lines in Come From Away are delivered in asides ("interviews") directly to the audience than in dialogue with other characters. Characters frequently just come out and tell us how they're feeling instead of showing it through actions. The patter is rapid fire, with narrating characters weaving in and out of one another, exactly the way an editor would mix interview footage in a documentary film. On a screen, this method works -- partly for lack of alternatives when you have no footage of actual events, partly because you can get right up close and personal with the people telling their stories. On stage, the artifice of all this looms large.
The music of Come From Away was another sticking point for me. It's a cliche to walk out of a musical humming one of its songs, but it's true that when you can't do that, the musical is dangerously forgettable. That's the case here. Also, it's old-fashioned music in a few ways. The five-piece band is a traditional Irish folk ensemble, so all the music feels old-timey and strangely out-of-place. (Is Newfoundland populated mostly with Irish immigrants? Not that I knew, and not that I easily found online.) There are also very few solos in the show. Nearly all the numbers are elaborate chorus productions with loads of characters, somewhat impersonal and very much of the style I associate with Broadway shows from decades past.
There are a few moments of drama and emotion that do land well, and they're the moments where the show truly does get personal with just one or two characters. A subplot tracking the relationship between a gay couple has a meaningful resolution. The closest thing to a "show-stopping number" is the one true uninterrupted solo that comes near the end, when an airline pilot character sings her personal journey: what flying means to her, and how this experience has changed her. It's a truly powerful moment in the show, packing quite an emotional punch.
I gather all this works better for some than others. There are plenty of positive reviews of the show. While I myself wasn't really loving it, the performance we attended received a rapturous standing ovation at the end. (Though that happens all the time at Buell, so maybe isn't very telling.)
The show has moved on now from Denver, but might be coming to your city in the months ahead. I'd advise caution, though. I'm not sure how you'd tell whether you're in the group this works for or the group it doesn't, but I'd call it a B- overall.
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