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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Come From Away Also see Richard's reviews of Stay a While: A Birthday Play in Four Seasons, Appropriate, and The Last Show on Earth
Irene Sankoff and David Hein's show tells the real-life story of September 11, 2001, from the point of view of the local residents around Gander, Newfoundland and a sampling of the seven thousand airline passengers who suddenly found themselves stranded in the Canadian northeast for five days, while air travel was shut down. Come From Away began its life at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in 2015. And if you subtract out the COVID-19 closure, the show itself ran for over four years on Broadway at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, winning both the Drama Desk and Outer Circle Critics awards for Outstanding Musical. Filled with humor and desperation and a yearning to get to America, it's a little bit like Casablanca. If Rick's Café served fish and cheese hot dish. This is a story of fearful refugees and unexpected kindness, filled with romance and drama and jokes and great songs. It's set around an abandoned airfield, which was once the largest on the continent. The nearly two hour show (here without an intermission) is getting a thunderous revival at Stages St. Louis under the direction of Michael Bello. The live onstage band is conducted by Jacob Carll and, though the dancing is not the main event, there's lots of clever movement thanks to Kyli Rae. She starts out choreographing a lot of flying wooden chairs, first at a Tim Horton's coffee shop, then takes us inside the stranded jets for some literal cabin fever. Eventually, the chairs and the cast are arranged into a series of bus rides that are unexpectedly tense: under director Bello, the travelers from those 38 stranded planes might as well be riding in the dark to Auschwitz, for all the suspense. Zoe Vonder Haar reprises her role as Beulah from last year's production at the Muny Opera, a production that relied on spectacle and sweep and scope, on a stage you could park a jet on. Now the highly atmospheric airport lounge on the Stages boards is by Ann Beyersdorfer (who also designed this month's Little Women at the Rep). In performance, Ms. Vonder Haar is bracingly clear and direct, as one of the local school teachers, for whom neighborly accommodation comes naturally. This latest revival is much more a gallery of great character studies on a normal-sized stage, with lovable Kilty Reidy as the mayor who has to quell not only a massive influx of foreigners, but a bus driver's strike as well. Antonio King is delightful as Bob, the Black traveler assigned to gather up every backyard grill he can find to feed the sudden population explosion. And Rheaume Crenshaw keeps our minds hovering over the immediate tragedy of 9/11 as Hannah, trying to find her firefighter son who is lost in New York. Amy Blake is wonderfully naturalistic as Diane, and Jamie LaVerdiere adds great awkward British humor as Nick, who tries to win her over. He makes for a very charming Canadian elsewhere in the story, and they all suddenly seem like different people in the number "Costume Party," in which donated clothes are brought to the local public school where hundreds of expats have taken shelter. The fine costumes are by Catherine Lovejoy. Leah Berry is touching as Bonnie, who volunteers at the local animal shelter, rounding up pets from the cargo holds. And Aléna Watters shows great, believable resolve as Beverly, telling the story of becoming the world's first female pilot for American Airlines in "Me and the Sky," once again reminding us of the production's deep-rooted psychology under director Bello. Patrick Blindauer gets a great assortment of roles, including the affable traffic cop, who later must arrest a Muslim airplane passenger, played by Albert Jennings. Mr. Jennings and Nikita Burshteyn also play the gay travelers, "the Kevins," and the arc of their relationship seems especially nuanced here. Cara Palombo is funny and naive as Janice, a wet-behind-the-ears TV reporter who keeps the story on its toes. There are pin-drop moments of silence over the weight of history on a personal level and an almost Irish kind of full-throated resolve, as if the Proclaimers themselves had laid siege to the stage in the play's biggest moments. Antonio King has the oddest scene when it's all nearly over, and he's back in New York: beholding an empty freeway and impulsively thinking he could shoot down another hijacked jetliner from that wide open space, as if revenge were more an American thing. As if the warm idyllic Canadian spell that transformed them all had finally vanished. The show has been exceedingly popular all around the nation this season, with the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack. But the psychological enhancement in this new Stages production is truly remarkable–it's a show that looks even better close-up. And what a perfect time to be reminded of how good it is to have good neighbors. Come From Away, produced by Stages St. Louis, runs through October 18, 2026, at the Kirkwood Performing Art Center, 201 E. Monroe, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.stagesstlouis.org. Cast: Teen Ensemble: Production Staff: The Stages Band Additional Production Staff: Production Coordinator: Alden Fournier |
