Notes on visit to preview of Come from Away, 17/7/19, Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, as part of a group from the Rotary Melbourne by Dr David Kram.
""Come from Away" is a welcome balance to flim-flam, glitz-glam or candy-floss musicals. One could call it a ‘meat and cheese’ musical, if only because that food combo is typical of the place where the musical is set – Newfoundland, right on the eastern edge of Canada.
Be very aware, however, that this is not just homespun heart warming fare, but a very slick, very precise, very taut play-with-music-underpinning. It is very much an ensemble work. The very diverse mix of ages and personalities on stage resonate with the diversity of Come from Away’s audiences, which accounts for the immediate standing ovation the cast and musicians experienced at the preview I attended at the Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, on July 16th, 2019.
So why could this concise, one-act ensemble musical win a Tony Award and be so successful worldwide with five casts working concurrently? Well, the first impression I got was a carefully worked-through script with quippy but never flippant humour.
The music, never obtrusive, was carefully integrated into the play and the small team of musicians obviously knew the play well, with the violinist especially taking part in the action. The music was redolent of 2001 rock but also had folk-music elements, which interested me greatly, as I was told by the locals that there was a big Irish immigration to Newfoundland after the potato famine, which also accounts for the musical accents of the local dialect – admirably evoked by the cast – which is a cocktail of Canadian, Irish and British West-Country.
I was told that Celtic professors go to study it to this day. The cast worked so precisely with simple clarity it took my breath away and that of my wife, who has a dance background. One moment they were passengers in a plane, the next the locals of Gander, Appleton and other communities. A change of hat, a change of body posture, a change of accent – all this sufficed in a unit set to convey instantly who was who and what they were feeling.
I learnt a lot about:
