Come From Away

Review of Come From Away on Broadway

Everyone has been telling me to see Come From Away for the longest time. Both of my bosses, who have been in New York City for a very long time and worked in theatre for decades now, have told me it is one of the best recent shows that they have ever seen.

I’d been holding off for the longest time because A) I don’t live in New York City and B) I hate buying tickets at a full price, but when I was up in New York and having my show extravaganza, I bought a TDF membership. So my friend and I bought TDF tickets, expected to be seated in the upper mezzanine in some not-so-great seats. We were blown away when we were handed our tickets and saw that we had Row J, right on the aisle, in the orchestra.

Outside of my Off-Broadway shows, specifically the ones at the Park Avenue Armory, this was the first time I was this close to the stage. My friend and I were gushing about the seats because we had the perfect angle of the stage, no one really in front of us to block our view, and Come From Away ended up being a fantastic show. Onwards with the review!

Come From Away tells the story of 9/11 in a small town called Gander.

What’s unique about about the story of Come From Away is that it is based off of real events and people—each of the characters is named after someone who lived in the town of Gander when 9/11 happened.

In case you do not know the story before this, Come From Away is about the fateful day in which American airspace was closed and thousands of people, on the planes that were rerouted, were brought to Gander in Newfoundland, which is a small town that had a population roughly equivalent to the plane people that landed.

These individuals, who were from all over the world, were then housed across the town in community centers, schools, and local homes until the airspace was up and going again.

Each of the actors throughout the show portrays multiple characters. The female pilot, who is said to be the first female pilot in American Airlines, also is a community member.

Two actors play Hannah, the mother who loses her firefighter son during the 9/11 rescues, and the guy who is from New York City. Then there’s the gay couple that breaks up by the end of the show, one of whom plays the bus driver on strike and the other the Muslim character who gets actively discriminated against by the airlines towards the end.

I don’t want to focus too much on the characters because I think it can get a little confusing trying to write out the actors and the individual storylines that go into one human body playing it all, but I think CFA’s approach to this is absolutely brilliant.

The actors seamlessly put on different clothes and attire throughout, switching from one character to the next. The blocking for the actors, too, is absolutely incredible because they move about the stage, which rotates in a circle, very methodically and calculated. They also move the chairs out and about since they need to portray the airplane scenes, which may be hard to see if you’re sitting very front row of the orchestra.

By the time I saw the show in August 2022, a surprising number of the original cast were still in the show. I think I counted four original members, and I had just missed Jenn Colella coming back take over the lead role temporarily.

I had seen the professional and bootleg shoots of the show online, specifically on Apple TV+ right before I had seen the show, and I cried while watching those. But I didn’t really expect the show to be as funny as it was. Almost everyone was laughing pretty hard despite the serious undertones, and when the moments were right, there were moments of silence in acknowledgement.

Come From Away truly is a special show. I may not have an insanely long review about the show to top off what I thought, but it’s a show that is comedic and about the spirit of humanity as a whole. The people were kind to do what they did, and those who landed in Gander because of a tragedy will find that they found a new home in those they met purely by accident. Go see it before it closes, even if you’re not sure.

Life is too short to be hesitant. There are moments that acknowledge the tragedy that happened in New York, specifically with the character from the city and whose father’s apartment faces the towers, as well as the serious moment towards the end of “Something’s Missing.” As he says in that song, he was so much better when he was in Gander, not confronting the brunt of what happened in his hometown.