So in the face of the atmospheric river pummeling the Seattle area, the Lovely Bride and I bundled ourselves out to the second performance for the Seattle Rep season, a revival of a musical we saw way back in 2015. OK, its a revival, I thought, I've seen more than enough versions of the same Shakespeare play, or works by August Wilson, so I thought I could manage a new version of a feel-good musical about 9/11. I can do this fairly dispassionately.
Not really. I was in tears after the first five minutes, and kept quietly weeping at points throughout the play. Looking at my original review, I had been emotionally touched, but it felt harder this time. Maybe its post-tramatic stress, maybe it was old memories being excavated, maybe it was just some things going on in my personal life, but I tired of trying to surreptitiously wipe the tears from my eyes and just let them run down my cheeks. The heck with it.
Everyone has their own 9/11 stories, like my parents had Pearl Harbor stories (coming home from church and hearing about it on the radio in the living room). And seeing the performance on Pearl Harbor Day may have had something to with my reaction as well. The one thing I haven't mentioned before about it in this space was the silence in the skies in the week that followed. We are on the opposite hill in the Green River valley from SeaTac, and just south of both the Renton airport and Boeing Field, so while we don't get a lot of airplane noise, there is enough of a background rumbling from time to time to make us aware of its existence. But in the week that followed 9/11, there was nothing. And oppressive silence. It was a ghost in my memory until the play brought it all back to me.
Anyway,
Come From Away is a feel-good musical about 9/11. After the four passenger jets hit, all air traffic was grounded, and planes in the air had to land ASAP. A lot of the transatlantic flights, like 48 planes, include jumbos, had to come down in Newfoundland, in a small airport near the town of Gander (back in the day before jet travel, planes would fly to Newfoundland, refuel, and make the jump across the Atlantic. My father went to war on a bomber that refueled there). So the airfield was larger than was then-needed for the present day, until 48 planes had to touch down and 9000 passengers were grounded for the better part of the week.
The musical is about those passengers and the nearby towns (Gander and others) who suddenly had to take care of the new arrivals. It is a normal day until all hell breaks loose as the passengers worry, panic, try to get in touch with loved ones, and find out what happened, while the townies struggle to get basic support for the new arrivals, with no idea how long the emergency would last. There are all sorts of stories spinning out of the situation - the pilot that can no longer fly, the mother whose son is fireman in NYC, a couple gets together, another couple breaks up, a rabbi has to set up a kosher kitchen, the local ASPCA has to deal with all the animals trapped in the luggage compartments (including a couple chimps).
And the actors pull it off incredibly well. The cast - a massive (for modern theater) dozen actors, plus a six-member band are on stage for the duration of the performance, and move effortless between characters, such that I did not recognize them when they transformed. Accents and mannerisms are added and dropped with each costume changes. And a lot of the folk on stage are locals that I have seen at other performances in the Seattle Area, though even many of them are making "Their Seattle Rep debuts". And that's something I love about local theatre, particularly if they create such strong performances.
And the performances are strong, the songs are excellent, and the action moves swiftly from beginning to end. There is not any dead spots here - most of the scenes are frenetic and even the slow songs have an emotional weight that pushes them through. There are strong Celtic/Irish/Nor'easter flavor to the music, including a lot of stomping and dancing. And the actors play their own instruments on-stage, which is something I don't remember from the original. It is a conceit that works incredibly well.
Is there one actor to single out? Not really, because they are ALL that good, and put everything out on the stage to a packed house. It was really an ensemble job, and all of them were frankly amazing.
Can I quibble about anything? Sure. The revival felt over-produced as far as stagecraft. The original we saw (pre-Broadway) worked from a mostly-empty stage, with chairs and boxes brought on from the periphery. This version set up the framing device of a 10-year reunion by physically setting it in the Gander high school gym, complete with basketball hoops folded up along the walls. I don't know if all that was needed, since the action at the center quickly took hold and dominated the space.
So, is there a moral here? People pull together in times of stress and heartbreak? Canadians are basically nice? I can't exactly say, but this is revival that you should attend. It is more than worth it. Good job, mates.
More later,
