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on the northeast tip of North America
Oct. 13th, 2024 10:21 pmI saw Come From Away this week, on its last day but one in London, and I'm still thinking about it. It's a musical based on a real bit of history: on 9/11, as we know, all US airspace was closed with no notice, meaning any inbound aircraft already over the Atlantic had to either turn back towards Europe or set down in at the nearest airport outside the US. In practice, that meant one of a number of Canadian airports, of which the most significant was Gander, Newfoundland. Fifty years earlier, all transatlantic aircraft used to stop at Gander or Keflavik for refuelling, and the Gander airport is still one of the world's largest for all it only hosts a handful of flights.
So thirty-eight aircraft and their 7000 passengers landed in Gander, a town of 10,000 people, on a wild, remote, storm-shattered island. And Come From Away is a true story of what happens when that happens: how the 10,000 people took care of the 7000 people, with no notion or who they were, what they'd want or need, while around them the world had irrevocably changed. It's full of rich, beautiful detail, no story as such but textured historical documentary that works so well as a musical. There's a little romance, a little break-up, and other, more complicated little tales. One of the songs is about Beverly Bass, the first woman to captain a commercial airliner, and the first woman to lead an all female flight crew in the history of commercial aviation. Another song is about passengers from north Africa who are forced to get off a bus in a dark forest of strangers, that they think must be soldiers. But the passengers don't speak English, and their hosts don't even know what language they speak. And violence feels unutterably close - until one of the Newfoundlanders takes a Bible from one of the passengers, and looks up a verse that he can only find by number and points it out to everyone: be anxious for nothing. Be not afraid.
Another little story is about one of the Newfoundlanders visiting one of the passengers, an Orthodox rabbi, to say, I was born in Poland, I think. My parents sent me here and said I should never tell anyone I was Jewish, not ever. Not even my wife. But now I'm an old man, and now you've come. Here you are.
That's the motif that occurs over and over. "you are here" - you are on this impossibly remote island that you've never heard of, but also, you are here. Here, after everything that's happened. Here, encased by space and time and selfhood. You are here. I really love it.
And the other thing I find kind of... I don't know if funny is the word, but. I love the constant repetition of the theme, that this place is at the far north of a continent, on the edge of the Atlantic, on this storm-shattered island where a river meets the sea. Gander is; but so are we. We are here. You are here.
Anyway. It is truly lovely, and I'm so glad I saw it and I don't know why I didn't years ago. I think I'll actually have to wait for a revival to see it again, but I will.
So thirty-eight aircraft and their 7000 passengers landed in Gander, a town of 10,000 people, on a wild, remote, storm-shattered island. And Come From Away is a true story of what happens when that happens: how the 10,000 people took care of the 7000 people, with no notion or who they were, what they'd want or need, while around them the world had irrevocably changed. It's full of rich, beautiful detail, no story as such but textured historical documentary that works so well as a musical. There's a little romance, a little break-up, and other, more complicated little tales. One of the songs is about Beverly Bass, the first woman to captain a commercial airliner, and the first woman to lead an all female flight crew in the history of commercial aviation. Another song is about passengers from north Africa who are forced to get off a bus in a dark forest of strangers, that they think must be soldiers. But the passengers don't speak English, and their hosts don't even know what language they speak. And violence feels unutterably close - until one of the Newfoundlanders takes a Bible from one of the passengers, and looks up a verse that he can only find by number and points it out to everyone: be anxious for nothing. Be not afraid.
Another little story is about one of the Newfoundlanders visiting one of the passengers, an Orthodox rabbi, to say, I was born in Poland, I think. My parents sent me here and said I should never tell anyone I was Jewish, not ever. Not even my wife. But now I'm an old man, and now you've come. Here you are.
That's the motif that occurs over and over. "you are here" - you are on this impossibly remote island that you've never heard of, but also, you are here. Here, after everything that's happened. Here, encased by space and time and selfhood. You are here. I really love it.
And the other thing I find kind of... I don't know if funny is the word, but. I love the constant repetition of the theme, that this place is at the far north of a continent, on the edge of the Atlantic, on this storm-shattered island where a river meets the sea. Gander is; but so are we. We are here. You are here.
Anyway. It is truly lovely, and I'm so glad I saw it and I don't know why I didn't years ago. I think I'll actually have to wait for a revival to see it again, but I will.