Because We Come From Everywhere… – Vancouver – [03/10/2019]

I’m an Islander, I am an Islander
Welcome to the Rock!

[…]

Welcome to the fog
Welcome to the trees
To the ocean and the sky
And whatever’s in between
To the one’s who’ve left
You’re never truly gone..

I have a strong positive reaction to nearly every live show I see. In all my years in and out of theatre there has only been one that was an exception. I fall in love with each and every one of them.

But every so often…one comes along that is…special. That is something even beyond special, that pulls something out of me that I didn’t even know I had in me to begin with.

Come From Away, is one of those on that very very short list.

This show….

I don’t even know if I have words to say what this show feels like. I don’t know if I can pin it down to a moment, if I can find the right pieces to put together to tell you what it feels like. The world needs this show. Needs stories like this. Needs them desperately. This show doesn’t just have a catchy soundtrack and some very witty dialogue, this show doesn’t just give a little bit of escapism…this show…gives something far more precious. It gives hope. Hope that in the midst of everything terrible that is happening in your life, in everyone’s life, in the world, there is beauty, there is kindess…because things like this happen.

Bear with me, this may take a little while…

When I was just in grade school, my Mum and I went on a school skiiing trip, and this was back way before cell phones, when buses had those tiny tv screens in the ceilings. So a bunch of tired kids were treated to a screening of Speed on a bus in the middle of the night going down the highway. I remember how huge that screen felt in those circumstances, how close I felt to the actors, how incredibly shocked I was when the movie ended and I was suddenly back in the bus looking at this little tiny screen.

That’s the same thing that happened ot me tonight.

I had dress circle seats. Which are some of the best seats in the house for sightline, but have the downside of being far away from the stage, and I hadn’t brought my mini-binoculars, so I had a moment of going “oh dear, this could be interesting”. And then it didn’t matter, because just like that television screen long ago, the stage suddenly expanded and rolled close, and it felt as if I was sitting the front row. It takes a lot of energy to do that on multiple levels.

At first the audience applauded with every song, and then about fifteen minutes in, there were no applause, there was no whispering, the whole theatre was simply rapt. And when there were pauses it was usually for laughter (“for the love of god, stop bringing toilet paper to the lion’s club!!!”)…or that still silence that means everyone in that theatre is remembering exactly where they were when this story happened. Because all of us remember it. All of us. Every one.

I take just one second for myself and I’m sitting in my car
I’m in the library
I’m in the staff room
And I turn on the radio…
You are here, at the start of the moment
On the edge of the world, where the river meets the sea
Here on the edge of the Atlantic
On an island in between there and here

It’s a cast of twelve people. And the entire set other than the backdrop? Is 12 chairs. That’s it. Twelve people, twelve chairs. And that alone is amazing. Those twelve people managed to make up a cast of 7000 people and dozens of locals (oh, and 19 animals), and those twelve chairs weren’t chairs – they were planes, school buses, and everything in between. As an actress it was one of the most amazing performances I have ever witnessed…and as a person…it was the most beautiful story I’ve ever experienced.

I’ve got one plane who’s asking for priority debark…turns out they were on their way to Orlando…with 35 Wish kids heading to Disneyworld

I think it was then that the few people in the audience that weren’t crying, suddenly were. And as it turns out? Those ‘wish kids’?

Well, we had to tell them that they weren’t going to Disney after all, but as it turns out? They didn’t care! They were having hayrides, and riding horses, and if they’d gotten to Florida? They well…it turns out they would have had a week of rain.

Canada is not perfect, far from it, we have screwed up just as much as anybody else…but the fact that the events of this story actually happened in my country make me heart-burstingly proud.

There are some moments that stand out; the biggest one , other than the drum beat of the opening number, is the solo of Me & The Sky, which was both amazing and wrenching to watch. But the one that really stands out is the one I often skip over when I’m listening to the CD…about half way through the show, there’s a prayer. And all the characters are on stage, and you see those that are Jewish finally speaking (“I was always told never to tell people I was jewish, but after what’s happened? After knowing that any one of us could have died on Tuesday? It just doesn’t seem important anymore”) and the muslims laying out their prayer mats, and all these different cultures and religions all thrown together in this tiny little church…and it just hits you just how…all the same we all are. We are all fragile and frightened, we are all looking for a light in the darkness. That’s what holds us together…and too often we forget that.

The show is an hour and a half long…and there’s no intermission. And you do not notice. It feels like twenty minutes. I know the soundtrack inside out, so I knew when it was coming to the finale, and found myself htinking “no! No I don’t want to leave!”.

And after five days? We just rolled the Zamboni over the ice…and we played hockey…

When the last plane left, I sat down, and I cried…I hadn’t let myself cry the whole time…

When the show concluded, it did so with a finale that brought the entire Queen Elizabeth theatre roaring to its feet, crying cheering, and screeching as though we had just done shots in a Newfoundland Legion bar.

The lights shut off with a flash and people were still cheering, and then suddenly the stage lights came back on, and the band stepped forward (because the band is on stage for the whole show) and rolled into the exit music, which brought everyone to tears again…and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’s hands still sting.

Theatre is a transient art, performers bring heartbursting joy to the world and then that’s it, the show’s over. Even if you film it, you could never capture what that theatre felt like. But some shows, just some…are so powerful that they leave an indelible mark on the souls of the people who are lucky enough to witness it.

It will be a long long while before I can afford to do anything big and fancy…there may not be another set of tickets in my future for a little while…but this? I will never ever regret seeing this….