Depending upon the kindness of strangers: IRT's 'Come from Away'

Residents, stranded passengers reflect on what they've been through. 

Disaster generates a leap across barriers of strangeness and reserve in "Come from Away," the final production of Indiana Repertory Theatre's 2025-26 season. Visited Sunday at the last performance of opening weekend, the award-winning musical  had attracted an audience obviously primed to enjoy an uplifting show. 

Its hundred-minute run time requires an extraordinary amount of emotional buy-in. But by now the public comes in already enthralled by the story of how a small town in Newfoundland played generous host to thousands of stranded airline passengers on September 11, 2001. I was well advanced into middle age on that disturbing day, but the audience that "Come from Away" can now attract includes many young people for whom 9/11 takes on the aura of myth. 

Like most myths, 9/11 carries a great burden of sorrow. This show touches on that burden often, but the primary emotional payoff is a message of community forming almost instantaneously between international travelers and a close-knit place called Gander in Newfoundland. In 2001, its main import beyond its environs lay in the past, when transatlantic flights had to refuel there before they could reach most destinations in North America.

Two Canadians, Irene Sankoff and David Hein, wrote "Come From Away" with the knowledge that something remarkable happened across several days beyond 9/11, when American airspace remained closed in fears of a possible follow-up attack involving hijacked airliners. The team drew on those stories, often based on the recollections of people involved, and wove together a series of episodic narratives using songs both vigorous and poignant. They've had a hit on their hands since the show's Broadway debut in 2017. 

An onstage band is called for, and IRT's (directed by Angie Benson) supplied the vigor and tenderness as required, song after song. The styles encompassed both the rock-derived norm of today's musical stage and the local color of folk-oriented dance bands. With the band's help, the direction of James Vasquez seems airtight in linking spoken and sung episodes, and the ensemble cast spreads itself with flawless timing over a tapestry of action requiring multiple character portrayals. 

Jean McCormick sings "Me and the Sky"

The scenic design, by Diggle, has an elaborate backdrop of lights poised to offer the kind of illumination modern airports need; the contrast with the intimate stories told in front of that arrangement helped emphasize the contrast between the terrorist-spurred global crisis and its effect on private lives, both settled and in transit. Costumes (credit Tracy Dorman) are contemporary-casual, with a tweak toward everyday Atlantic-island garb for Gander residents.

The creators of the show checked off the kinds of story whose significance is both perennial and has special status in the 21st century. Some of these get the benefit of individual songs: The first female pilot finally discovering that only the sky's the limit, the accidental post-divorce couple getting acquainted and falling in love, the homosexual partners worried about both their business and their personal rapport, the black man finding that white hospitality well-fueled by alcohol can be embraced and stimulate his charitable impulses, the novice TV reporter feeling her way through the biggest story of her young career. 

The sketch structure of the show is the only logical choice in telling the Gander-9/11 story, but the recent tradition, which perhaps started with "A Chorus Line," is wearing pretty thin by now. How much selective heart-tugging can we tolerate, now that we've been "25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee"-stung and similarly bitten in plays that take a fly-by approach to human lives?  For many a cleverly designed piece of musical theater, having our common humanity reaffirmed tangentially must be enough. 

[Photos by Zach Rosing]