Every so often the theatre engages us in a startling way. Instead of urging us to escape from our own perspectives it asks us to travel to somewhere else entirely, to a place that for some of us is shaped by an unfamiliar and challenging terrain. It invites us into ourselves.
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By the time the Broadway phenomenon Come From Away premieres at the Civic Theatre in Newcastle, for a three-week season starting on February 18, 2023, that invitation will already have been taken up by audiences across the globe. Taken up by audiences that don't normally enjoy musicals. By audiences that have never even heard of Gander, a tiny and isolated Newfoundland town hidden somewhere amidst the rocky outcrops of the North Atlantic on the east coast of Canada.
It was upon that ordinary and unassuming town that some 7000 airline passengers suddenly descended, like a human squall of fear and confusion, on September 11, 2001. When American airspaces suddenly closed above those tragic moments, even before the Twin Towers had fallen, any pilot anywhere near the tiny airfield in Gander had to ground their plane and ask questions afterwards.
Jumbos from all over the world had to park on a windswept Canadian runway they had never seen before, and stay there indefinitely.
A rare and unfamiliar journey
What happened after that, to those passengers and that town, is where Come From Away begins. Where the residents of Gander take us after that forms one of those rare and unfamiliar journeys. It's not a plan designed for a great escape. It's a map leading us from an enormous hardship to a greater heart. It departs from a point of inhumanity before arriving at its exact opposite.
Leaving aside the fact, at least until you see it, that this musical sparkles with a lyrical energy that is frenetic and relentless.
Forget that every performer manages to switch from a frightened passenger to a practical samaritan faster than a coin flips.
Or that spoken stories transition to sing-along warm currents of live music played directly from the stage.
There's somehow more to this adventure than all of that.
This musical sparkles with a lyrical energy that is frenetic and relentless. Forget that every performer manages to switch from a frightened passenger to a practical samaritan faster than a coin flips. Or that spoken stories transition to song along warm currents of live music played directly from the stage. There's somehow more to this adventure than all of that.
Without taking any credit away from the award-winning writing team of Irene Sankoff and David Hein, whose intricate wordplay lovingly captures the vernacular of the residents, this is a story written by actions. Spontaneous, generous acts of giving with no need for a receipt.
As the enormity of September 11 asserted itself upon a grieving America, there were Americans in Gander who still hadn't heard from their loved ones. Their phone calls were left unanswered. Even if they could go home, there was nothing to assure them that their family members would safely be there. They were suspended in panic, in anger, in disbelief.
When they fell to earth, the townspeople of Gander were there to catch them.
Exceptional kindness
If the exceptional kindness of this otherwise unexceptional community can be personified by any one individual, it is probably Claude Elliott. Before it suddenly became his responsibility to feed, clothe, house and counsel thousands of strangers amidst the anguish of a catastrophe, Elliott was Gander's mayor. He sat down alongside everyone else at the same coffee shop each morning. He listened to petty, insular grievances. He found small local solutions for problems that were often even smaller. But if his external, civic resources were always limited, his personal and internal resources were near limitless.
So effective was his leadership during the emergency that he is now, without ever wanting or training to be, an internationally-respected expert in international disaster management.
When I met Claude Elliott, now the former mayor, recently I wasn't surprised to find him sitting quietly in a hotel foyer, as anonymous as an onlooker. Only a few hours before, after the auditorium had finally surrendered from their standing ovation at the Sydney premiere of Come From Away, Elliott effortlessly directed an already emotional audience straight towards their tissues.
We all knew we'd just spent two joyous hours in the company of actors, that there would always be a curtain separating us from the story of Gander, yet here before us was the real thing.
We thought we'd come to the theatre to leave the truth of our lives behind. But instead we just journeyed into, been challenged to question and then stumbled inevitably upon ourselves.
As Elliott spoke about kindness, its power and its rarity, a young girl in front of me sobbed into her father's shoulder. The man next to me sprung to his feet several times, as though Elliott's words had enlivened an energy in him that had suddenly become bigger than himself.
Perhaps it's the creation of that energy that practitioners of theatre chase but seldom reach, that makes Come From Away an unmissable piece of storytelling.
When it comes to Newcastle next year, come from wherever you are to find yourself somewhere within it.
