Come From Away – hospitality, thankfulness and oddles of humanity (Grand Opera House until Saturday 29 June)

It’s as if Come From Away has been soaked in empathy and left to stew. The people of Gander and the passengers who unexpectedly camp out for five days when their transatlantic flights are grounded in Newfoundland in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, bond through friendship, food and faith, despite lingering fears. The population nearly doubles as air traffic controllers issue instructions to ground flights crossing the Atlantic on the first landfall.

As the confusion lifts and the everyday preoccupations dissolve as a town rises to the occasion, and small-scale acts of human kindness combine with community-wide acts of compassion. And there is spirit of thankfulness, not begrudging, but heartfelt as everyone comes to terms with their temporary situation and a world that changed for the worse between take-off and landing.

Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s musical, directed by Christoper Ashley, rarely drops the cracking pace it sets right from the word go: sitting in the stalls you certainly feel that “you’ve at the start of a moment”.

Howell Blinkley’s dense grid of lights over the stage bring a focus to individual chairs before the full beam of the side lights mounted on the tall tree trunks that populate the wings flood the stage for scenes in the local bar.

There’s a real Celtic feel to the production. The accents of Gander have a natural Irish twang. A talented band of eight musicians sit on stage and at times move among the actors with fiddles and whistles and pipes. The audience in Belfast feel at home with the Titanic gag(s).

As the individual character storylines develop, the songs – part sung part spoken – bring coherence back to the narrative. Lead Us Out of the Night is mellow and incredibly moving as passengers and crew see TV footage of the 9/11 attacks for the first time. Later on, the one-act production includes perhaps the most tuneful version of Make Me A Channel of Your Peace, a song that many a school assembly or congregation has killed. It’s melded together with another two religions songs of peace as people of faith reach for familiar words to express their lament.

The show honours humanity (mostly) at its best.

The storyline about a Muslim chef who is seen as threatening, whose offers of help are continually dismissed, is eventually able to be useful, and then reverts to being seem as a threat provides a timely reminder of the racism that 9/11 exacerbated. Hannah’s long wait to hear news about her missing son, a New York fireman, regularly reconnects the audience to the loss and destruction that precipitated the Gander landings.

While the UK touring version of Come From Away doesn’t include the dynamism of the revolving stage in the Broadway production (which can still be enjoyed on Apple TV+) the cast of 12 follow a tight choreography that almost casually – yet incredibly precisely – moves chairs across the stage to create new scenes, delivering jackets lying over the back of them to just the right place to be picked up and transform an actor from a townsperson and an airline employee and back.

Come From Away finishes its run in the Grand Opera House on Saturday 29 June. Get a ticket and bring more than one tissue. It’s well worth stepping onto this emotional roller coaster.

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