When you think of pandemic-era musical movies, you probably think of something by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Maybe it’s Hamilton (2020). It was released over a year ahead of planned, coinciding with the height of that summer’s Black Lives Matter protests and prompting a very different critical response and reevaluation than the one that greeted it in 2016. Or maybe you think of In the Heights (2021). It was released after several pandemic delays and “flopped” at the box office due in part to its release strategy and the fact that few people had properly returned to moviegoing as a normal part of life. Maybe you even think of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (2021) remake, one of my favorite movies of last year which, like In the Heights, didn’t live up to expectations at the box office as was deemed to have “underperformed.”
But much has been said about all these movies. My first deep cut is one that slipped by largely unnoticed despite tapping into some powerful we’re-through-the-worst-of-it pandemic sentiment: Come From Away (2021). Filmed right when Broadway reopened in late spring 2021 and released on AppleTV+ coinciding with September 11th that fall, Come From Away took a very different path than Hamilton to reach Broadway prominence. When it came out in 2017, it was largely overshadowed by Dear Evan Hansen in terms of popularity and Tony award wins, but it gradually built an audience by simply being an amazing Broadway show.
The story of the musical is the largely unknown accounts of the townspeople of Gander, Newfoundland, and the 7,000 passengers they accommodated on September 11th, 2001. As the musical informs us, Gander used to be an essential place for planes to stop and refuel before crossing the Atlantic, but now it’s a townhome to a massive, largely ignored, airport. But this airport was a godsend on 9/11 as it provided a place for planes to stop and wait out whatever was going on in the US. 38 planes, to be exact, waiting for the better part of 5 days before they could get on to their destinations.
The story alone makes the musical something special as it presents the unknown history and many facts that enrich the knowledge of 9/11. Like many great musicals, this material naturally lends itself to considerations of nationhood and American identity. This is not to mention the New York-centric nature of Broadway shows which makes material related to 9/11 all the more enduring and significant.
The form of the musical is also quite unique to the Broadway stage drawing on many styles and techniques that are usually associated with straight plays (that is, non-musicals). In piecing together memories and characters from first-person accounts, Come From Away falls into the tradition of ethnotheater (famous examples of this include The Vagina Monologues and The Exonerated). Ethnotheater has been prominent on the American stage for the past several decades but examples of it used for a musical are rare.
This is because musicals, like Hamilton or Wicked, tend to emphasize the particularity of their characters while ethnotheater often wants to merge such accounts into characters that are composites of various interviews, similar to how biopics often combine three distinct real-life persons into a single character for movie purposes.
Rather than fight this tendency of ethnotheater, Come From Away leans into it having its dozen or so actors frequently and freely slip into a wide range of personas reflecting the experiences of the people of Gander and the “come from aways” on the planes. The narrative of the musical, then, is driven not by specific characters—even those we connect with a bit more, like the pilot who sings “Me and the Sky”—but by the full course of events. The story, then, is that of a town that nearly doubled in population in the course of a few hours and their heroic communal effort to accommodate this influx of people. It’s also the story of 7,000 plane people upended from their lives, scared, isolated, and confused, even more than we all were on 9/11. These ideas together make it, ultimately, the story of the kindness of strangers and the binds of human experience that hold us all together.
I listened to the soundtrack back in 2017 right after it came out, and I was blown away by how well the show captures and relays a lot of complex information and characters. But still, watching this taped version of the show is another experience entirely. As mentioned above, this performance was the very first one back after Broadway reopened 14 months after it shut down. Establishing shots of eerily quiet New York City streets underscore this reality. You can feel this context in the performance, a collective and cathartic exhale after such a traumatic time. As before 9/11, all Americans experienced the COVID-19 pandemic in the way it disrupted normal life, but the pandemic also manifested uniquely in NYC where it was, once again, the media center point for tragedy.
In this late spring/early summer 2021 pandemic context, with vaccines in arms and cautious optimism for the coming months, Come From Away’s themes of communal kindness and banding together ring all the more true. The pandemic, in many ways, was the exact opposite experience of that of Gander. They huddled with strangers while we kept them at arm’s length; they waited out a few days uncomfortably together while we waited out months uncomfortably far apart. But these differences only enhance the shared aspects of the two tragedies: fear of the unknown, confusion about what is happening, and, once at least somewhat on the other side, a feeling like something’s missing.
In place of a traditional 11 o’clock number, Come From Away has a pair of songs that tie things up before the finale. There’s “Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere,” which celebrates a successful return to America and the strangely wonderful experience of kindness that was felt in Gander. Then there’s “Something’s Missing” which reflects loss (of a relationship, of a son) and the challenges of returning to “real” life. This sentiment hits especially hard in this film version as it reflects the moment facing the audience, performers, and many viewers. Something—in this case, Broadway—is restored and that is cause for celebration. Celebration is also in order for vaccines, dropping COVID numbers, and the promise of summer weather.
But something is still missing. The streets are still quiet. Everyone wears a mask. It’s an odd middle space where the immediacy of the tragedy has mostly subsided and a “new normal” is still a while down the road. At this moment you face the fallout of events and wrestle through a myriad of feelings. This sort of late pandemic/“post” pandemic malaise is difficult to capture and, ironically, this musical about another American tragedy tapped into the sentiment expertly.
It’s a deep cut that is worth your time and then some.
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Come From Away was already an excellent musical, but captured in this recording, it is also something transcendent, a moment of the 2021 pandemic effect frozen in amber.
