Peter Marks' Washington Post review really said a lot to me in terms of what this show is. I hope the creative team makes the changes he suggests, because if there's really that much lack of conflict/the problems are first world problems, I'm not interested.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/come-from-away-stirs-powerful-memories-of-911/2016/09/08/32e8d5d0-7577-11e6-be4f-3f42f2e5a49e_story.html
Although the musical touches briefly on interesting aspects of the passengers’ feelings — such as, their guilt at being so lovingly cared for, when other more consequential 9/11 victims were suffering — many of the self-
narrated stories here fall into the lower-grade category of tales of inconvenience. In the conjuring, too, of Gander’s collective rising to the occasion, the individual characters, while embodied in lively fashion by an altogether splendid cast of 12, remain rather schematic. Virtually every song in “Come From Away,” accompanied zestily by an eight-member band conducted by Ian Eisendrath, is an ensemble piece; only an American Airlines pilot, played and sung superbly by Jenn Colella, is accorded her own complete solo number, and you’re left scratching your head a bit as to why.
Yes, “Come From Away” is headed to New York this winter, after an additional stop in Toronto and then a special pair of concerts in Gander itself. One wonders whether the story might be better served with slightly less emphasis on the logistics of sheltering the strangers and more on the characters’ lives. A gay couple, well played by Chad Kimball and Caesar Samayoa, for instance, might come more satisfyingly into focus if the nature of their unhappiness with each other were more incisively explained.
Updated On: 9/9/16 at 09:19 AM
