Come From Away, Performing Arts Fort Worth @ Bass Hall
The North American Tour of Come From Away; photo credits Matthew Murphy
—Jan Farrington
Come From Away was among the touring musicals lost to us in the Great Pandemic in 2020, as shows all across the country cancelled their plans. A classic feel-good piece about people pulling together in a time of crisis, it must have seemed right for Performing Arts Fort Worth to “make good” by scheduling this particular crowd favorite as one of the first to welcome North Texas audiences back to the beautiful Bass.
On Sunday evening, a masked sell-out crowd in the hall kept up a buzz that loosely translated as “Yessss!!!” And though it was the final Fort Worth show (at least, until next time), actors and musicians gave the performance an opening-night level of energy that pulled us into those moments on September 11, 2001 when 38 passenger planes were ordered to land at the airport in Gander, Newfoundland—on an island at the edge of the Atlantic, as U.S. airspace closed completely for the first time in history.
Towns like Gander (nearest to the airport) nearly doubled in size as almost 7,000 visitors popped in from the sky, needing clothes, food, showers, beds—and a way to phone home. The islanders organized an immense, round-the-clock effort that lasted for five days, refusing any payment but thanks. They were left exhausted but proud, and the repeated line was always: “You would’ve done the same.”
Canadian married music theater team Irene Sankoff and David Hein wrote the lively script, music, and lyrics, and were nominated for a 2017 Tony Award. All the elements of the hit Broadway production are here: Beowulf Borowitt’s woodsy flip-open set design; Christopher Ashley’s crisp, character-centered direction; Kelly Devine’s hearty choreography and music staging—anchored by the Celtic-tinged songs that run from start to finish. It’s no wonder this show has audiences by the earlobe within minutes: Sankoff and Hein have written the kind of tunes that dig a taproot straight down into American hearts. Fiddle and drums, guitars and pipes, stomps and clapping—and simple lyrics about living through both the ordinary days…and the extraordinary. The musicians who play onstage and off are simply terrific.
No worries about being able to sort one character from another (all the actors play multiple roles): vivid portraits of the “Plane People” and the islanders are sketched in just a few quick lines. It’s a delight to see some North Texas favorites in the cast, notably Julie Johnson as Beulah, a can-do older lady who organizes food and shelter for a group of 700 passengers (Johnson’s rich voice rings clear in both solo and ensemble numbers), and Chamblee Ferguson, a longtime member of the Dallas Theater Center’s acting company, who plays (among other roles) a lonely British businessman who might just win the romantic lottery before he gets home, if a stranger named Diane (Christine Toy Johnson) has a say.
Sharriese Hamilton plays Hannah, waiting for news of her firefighter son in New York. Her lovely soprano blends with Jeremy Woodard’s tenor on the fervent singing of an old Catholic hymn (“A Prayer”). Sharone Sayegh is memorably warm and spunky as Bonnie of the ASPCA, who tries to save animals trapped in the cargo holds. Woodard and Nick Duckart are sweetly funny as gay couple Kevin and Kevin, and Duckart scores again as Ali, a Muslim passenger who falls under sudden suspicion. Marika Aubrey is Beverley Bass (in real life a TCU grad), giving us the 9-to-5-ish story of her rise from plane-crazy girl to pioneering American Airlines captain (“Me and the Sky”). Julia Knitel is wide-eyed but determined as first-day TV reporter Janice; James Earl Jones II is both touching and telling as Bob, an African-American whose encounters with the scarily friendly islanders confuse and delight him. Kevin Carolan’s mayor Claude tries to keep calm, but “Jaysus!” it’s hard; and Harter Clingman plays municipal officer Oz, whose traffic “tickets” are mostly warnings to STFD (“Slow The F*** Down”).
On the 10th anniversary, many of the real-life Plane People returned to Canada to say thank-you again. On the 20th, pandemic travel issues posed limits, but virtual and in-person events were held both in Canada and around the U.S. to “honor what was lost” and remember “what we found.” Right now, perhaps more than before, we understand the words spoken by the passengers and islanders of Come From Away: “I don’t feel like the me from yesterday….Something’s missing… changed…rearranged… strained…over.”
For me, the essential joyfulness of Come From Away, it’s view of human nature as essentially good, was tinged this time with a sense of melancholy. Twenty years on, would we really “do the same” for a random group of strangers landing on our doorstep: all colors, all religions, all political views?
I’d like to think so, but those events feel very far away now. Again we are living through difficult times. Again, it’s so hard to know what’s happening. Can we remember how to pull together? Come From Away still has lessons to teach us.
Running as a limited engagement, October 19-24
