Wednesday 10 May 2017

Officially Mind Blown

"Come from away" -- a traditional Newfoundland expression
used to describe a person not born in Newfoundland.

This is going to be a short review because there isn't really anything to say except, "The show totally blew my mind."  I laughed.  I cried.  And I left the theatre reminded of some things that are easily forgotten in the rush and bustle of everyday activity.

Come From Away can best be described as a theatrical kaleidoscope.  The show has tremendous energy.  It hits the ground running and continues at that level of energy for an hour and forty minutes, no intermission.  I've never, never felt such a time span pass so quickly in a theatre.

"To create Come From Away, writers Irene Sankoff and David Hein 
collected hundreds of hours of interviews with the locals in 
Newfoundland, as well as the passengers who were stranded there 
during that fateful week.  These stories... (were) distilled into 
100 minutes, and performed by a cast of 12 representing 
nearly 16,000 people." 
                                                                                    (quote from the programme)

Yep, you read it right -- a cast of 12 performers.  But this isn't some historical drama where "numerous characters have been conflated into a few for dramatic purposes."  No: in Come From Away, each of the cast members portrays a number of different people, real people, and they shift from character to character with incredible speed while still maintaining believability.  Hence the kaleidoscope metaphor.

My credit here goes mainly to the writers who have successfully gone right to the key point in each of the dozens of actions depicted during the show, sometimes in a matter of mere seconds (or, if you prefer writers' terminology, fewer words than this sentence).  

The show is a musical, and the music -- which flows through about 80% of the show either as song, or dance, or backcloth to dialogue, is critical to the energy.  It's not especially memorable -- I didn't leave the theatre humming any tunes, but I didn't need to.

Many of the songs are written in what used to be known as "patter-song" style, with long strings of words unfolding at top speed to the tune.  If I had one little beef about the show, it was the degree of amplification used throughout which had the effect of blurring some of those words and making it hard to follow the train of thought of the character singing.

Since this is so thoroughly an ensemble show, in every sense of the word, it would be impossible and unnecessary to single out individual performances.  This cast, including on-stage musicians, worked from first to last as a team and that's how they deserve to be credited.  This show has no "leads" and definitely doesn't need them.

During those few days after September 11, 2001, a whole series of very human stories unfolded there on "the Rock" (the island of Newfoundland).  Moments of elation, moments of terror, moments of sorrow and moments of joy all coexisted side by side.  The entire event was a microcosm of human experience at its most fundamental.

The special genius of "Come From Away" is the way it captures that microcosm anew, condenses it for us, and in the process reminds us of some very important life lessons we learned at that time.

No comments:

Post a Comment