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MANILA, Philippines – As a piece of art, Come From Away is that flower that bloomed in adversity, the heather that shrouded the ruins and made it part of the earth again.
Celtic-inspired music welcomes the audience into the Samsung Performing Arts Theater, the stage made to look like the interior of an oversized log cabin. A large, yellow neon sign says, “You are here,” the show’s recurring motif. This idyllic atmosphere is hardly what you’d expect from a musical that has to do with the horrific September 11, 2001 terror attacks in different parts of the US.
That’s because, in the opening number, you are informed that you’re in Gander, Newfoundland (pronounced “Newfinland”, today I learned) in Canada, where 38 commercial flights were diverted after similar planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington DC, and on a field in Pennsylvania.
Yes, the show tells a true story.
In Gander, a town where “everybody knows everybody,” everybody is shocked by news of 9/11, and then jolted into action when they are told they would host diverted flights because the US closed its airspace. With their whole hearts, the Ganderites mobilize and produce everything — from hot meals to tampons — they could offer the sojourners, who end up numbering 7,000.
Why Gander and not any of the big Canadian cities? Gander sits on an island that juts out of the North American continent into the Atlantic. It’s remote, it lies fairly along the flight path from Europe, and, as the mayor regretfully explains: “Because, if anything goes wrong, we’ve a lot less people to lose.”
The material illustrates the trauma and recounts details that might have begun to slip from memory: Every plane was treated as a potential threat. It was before smartphones — the passengers had no idea what was going on, and they were ordered to remain in their seats until authorities could figure out what to do. They weren’t told what happened until they were finally deplaned and in the care of the Ganderites. Again, it was before smartphones — the passengers all had someone they were trying to reach but couldn’t.
The passengers want nothing more than to leave Gander ASAP, and the Ganderites stretch themselves thin to make everyone feel at home. It feels like the situation could detonate at any moment, and yet the opposite happens.
The show is about the human reaction to disruption. It is visceral but, ultimately, it comes down to choice. And the Ganderites choose kindness, welcoming nearly as many strangers as was their town’s entire population. Of course, the beauty of it lies in the human stories, told seamlessly in musical vignettes, just as seamlessly performed by the cast of 12.
The material is in expert hands — the dozen players plus the three swings (actors ever at the ready to take on an indisposed cast member’s role) are among the Philippines’ most accomplished thespians. They are, in alphabetical order: Cathy Azanza-Dy, Caisa Borromeo, Garrett Bolden, Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante, Mayen Bustamante-Cadd, Steven Cadd, Becca Coates, Rycharde Everley, Topper Fabregas, Sheila Francisco, Carla Guevara-Laforteza, Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo, Gian Magdangal, George Schulze, and Chino Veguillas.
MULTIPLE ROLES. The cast of 12 each plays several characters. In this scene, they are the passengers of one of the planes diverted to Gander. GMG ProductionsMichael Williams directs, and Rony Fortich provides musical direction for the Manila production. Book, music, and lyrics are by Irene Sankoff and David Hein. For reference, the show ran on Broadway from March 2017 to October 2022.
Are there only 12 characters? No. These theatrical masters transform into different characters, at times within the same line. A change in posture, a switch in costume, cues in the music and lights signal the shift, and it’s amazing how the imagination participates in the storytelling — it all works. The locals feel familiar, the visitors fascinating. You’re invested in the characters’ interwoven subplots, and you root for each one. You share their sepanx when the weeklong ordeal ends, flights resume, and it’s time to go.
There’s a message in this story of strangers meeting strangers at the wrong place and the wrong time. A town of people whom kids nowadays would call “basic” are to host a horde from all over the world, many from places where lifestyles are more complex, sophisticated, demanding, or just plain different from what they’ve known. Different languages, religions, motives, frames of mind. All brought together by force majeure to “somewhere in the middle of nowhere.”
The experience is universal enough. While 9/11 heightens the stakes in the story, we have all at least once found ourselves in a situation where we needed to be kind, or to receive kindness. We know how humbling it is to be on either side, and how it also makes us beam with a good kind of pride.
But I happened to watch the show on June 22, hours after the United States let loose a barrage of explosives on targets in Iran — nuclear facilities — and escalated the troubling exchanges of fire that had erstwhile been between only Iran and Israel.
We’re not about to talk politics here; the events of that day just emphasizes, in a rather troubling way, the message of Come From Away. If anyone finds trite the telling of stories of ordinary human kindness in extraordinary circumstances, then one needs only to check the news to see that human kindness has yet to deal a final blow to human malevolence.
SEPANX. As an audience member, you share in the separation anxiety of the characters when flights resume and the visitors go on their way. GMG ProductionsWe direly need to be told these stories of human kindness and compassion, because our species, it appears, has yet to produce enough of them to stop ourselves from inflicting suffering on one another.
This unassuming musical performed by a cast that identifies none of its individuals as the star or the headliner, double underscores the necessity and beauty of community. With their ensemble work — each member a strong performer yielding his or her energy to the whole — the show glimmers and reverberates. The medium is the message: It will only work if we work together.
The actors give of their humanity so much that we, the audience, are led to empathize with their characters. Their empathy begets our empathy for the people their characters represent. And thus the best human qualities — generosity, patience, faith, love — took evident shape onstage that day, while the rest of the world trembled at the prospect of yet another war.
Come From Away recalls the mercies the people of Gander showed strangers who hadn’t even meant to be there, and how that went a long way in softening the blow from 9/11. The story continues to ring in counterpoint to the tragedy that changed the world just over two decades ago.
Not even that long since, and we find ourselves in dreadfully familiar territory.
But, as the show says over and over, “You are here.” We can choose only how we’ll react. And we have a Canadian town’s example — digested into an hour-and-a-half musical — as an option.
Produced by GMG Productions and Stages, Come From Away runs until June 29 at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater at Ayala Malls Circuit Makati. – Rappler.com
