Back in its heyday before jets capable of making the transoceanic long haul became common, Canada’s Gander airport was “basically a pump-and-go station,” as journalist Andrea Sachs described in a 2019 Washington Post feature. “Locals would hitchhike up to the airport to buy ice cream and search for famous faces waiting to reboard, such as Elvis Presley; Frank Sinatra, who unsuccessfully tried to cut the food line; and Johnny Cash, who drunkenly fell off his bar stool at the Big Dipper Bar,” she wrote.
On the morning of 9/11 nearly 25 years ago, several small towns in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador were given the unexpected chance to flex their muscles and show that they still had the knack for hospitality. When the U.S. airspace was closed, the landing of 38 flights at the Gander airport carrying nearly 7,000 passengers and crew resulted in the population doubling during that time. Appleton, with a population of 680, hosted 90 stranded passengers, for instance— far more visitors than the town typically accommodated in a month. “Everybody was doing what they could,” former mayor Derm Flynn told the Washington Post. “The plane people needed food and a place to eat and sleep. They needed some assurance, compassion, love and counseling. They needed someone to give them a warm hug.”
Those instantaneous bursts of sparkling Newfoundland and Labrador hospitality are captured in bustling brilliance with Pioneer Theatre Company’s (PTC) Utah premiere of Come From Away, the musical with book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein. Directed and choreographed by Karen Azenberg, PTC’s artistic director, this production dazzles with outstanding singing from an ensemble of 14 actors who take on multiple roles, along with a stupendously good musical band of nine players, led by Phil Reno. The instrumentation includes fiddle, whistle, mandolin and, of course, the Irish bodhrán drum.
Overhearing our discussion about the show’s provenance, two women, veteran viewers of other productions of Come From Away, (which won a 2017 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical) who were seated next to me and my guest, assured us that we were going to love this show. Normally, this jaded skeptic would dismiss a comment like this before the first downbeat. But they were damn right: this show’s zing and zest snapped in every beat. And, it affirmed why this show has succeeded so effectively which has continued since its 2015 formal premiere. It had record-breaking runs in regional theaters before eventually landing on Broadway in 2017, where it played to consistent SRO houses and was returned to the stage in 2021 after the pandemic hiatus. The show closed in October 2022, after 1,669 regular performances, which placed it within the top 50 longest-running shows on Broadway.
This has been a very good season for all of PTC productions, including musicals (Dear Evan Hansen, the world premiere of Ten Brave Seconds and the season opener of the Canadian jewel 2 Pianos 4 Hands). But Come From Away is precisely the show that proves just how good a theatrical company’s musical chops really are. And this production abounds in distinguished vocal and instrumental musicianship. The onstage kinetics were marvelous.
Come From Away’s formula works emotionally, just as Alan Jackson’s song, Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning), accomplished when he premiered it at the Country Music Awards just two months after the attacks in 2001. The undercurrents of one verse from Jackson’s song — I’m just a singer of simple songs / I’m not a real political man — echoes repeatedly in the creative brief of Come From Away. One might argue with conviction that the musical’s thematic core hits now with even greater emotional impact than it did when it premiered more than a decade ago— a point confirmed in this Utah premiere.
Whatever happened to those days when the U.S. and Canada were genuinely the best of neighbors? Now, a second generation is growing up who were not alive when 9/11 happened and who might be wondering what life was like before every airport had set up its protocols of security theater, which regrettably also have normalized the idea of racial and ethnic profiling.
On a more positive note, the musical’s success has generated a nice bit of tourism for the Newfoundland towns, which also have benefited extensively from the generous gratitude of the people who were actually stranded there in 2001.
Creating the show started when Sankoff and Hein traveled to Newfoundland for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and collected oral histories from townspeople, including the Appleton mayor (Derm Flynn). While the couple rightly took artistic license to make the musical feasible for stage logistics, they based a good amount of material on the people they interviewed. For instance, Bob, who worried that his wallet could be stolen and later collected grills from backyards for the cookout, was based on a New Jersey man who confirmed these details. Likewise, the story about the woman who fretted about pets on the planes, including a pair of bonobo chimpanzees, was also factual. This includes the chimp who gave birth and lost the baby, and a couple of years later, gave birth to a healthy bonobo who was appropriately named Gander.
Also legitimate are the rituals of the screeching-in ceremony to initiate honorary Newfoundlanders and the kissing of Todd the Cod. The PTC production fires beautifully on all cylinders, reminding us that the virtues of compassion and community support for each other still matter.
For this production, PTC is conducting the Standing Ovation to Local Heroes initiative, which provides 500 complimentary tickets to first responders in recognition of their service to the community. The initiative was established with seed funding from PTC board member Laura Holleman and is supported by contributions from community partners, including University of Utah Health and Merit Medical.
The production runs through May 9. For tickets and more information, see the Pioneer Theatre Company website.