Anna Burnside reviews a production with plenty of ‘charm and energy’.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when all planes in American airspace were grounded, 38 had to land in the Newfoundland town of Gander, basically a rock in the Atlantic Ocean.
Gander, population 7,000, had to deal with 7,000 extra anxious souls, stranded miles from home, many without a word of English. Come From Away is the extraordinary story of the week a small town showed the world how you rally round.
It’s not the most obvious subject for a piece of thigh-slapping musical theatre, and at first the slight Canadian earnestness and Riverdance-twinged music felt incongruous. But as it warmed up, it was impossible not to appreciate both the stories - all true - and the charm and energy of the performers and musicians.
The former are not your average bunch of bendy musical theatricals - this is a physically diverse cast that actually look like they live in small town Canada. But they have the moves and the pipes to tell both strands of the narrative - the townspeople who cope with everything from Islamophobia to a pregnant bonobo monkey, and the plane people who are thrown into a situation with nothing more than their plane carry-on luggage.
Feelgood is an overused phrase but it’s hard to come away from this show without feeling that, in this small corner of North America, it was terrorism 0, humanity 1.
Come From Away’s run at the Glasgow King’s Theatre has completed. It’s UK tour continues.
Photo by Michael Wharley.
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