The Final Fifty: Come From Away

"A musical about 9/11?! Heck no!" is what I thought the moment I heard what some show down in San Diego was about. I was offended; I scoffed at the very notion.

I was in 8th grade when 9/11/2001 became a date of consequence. My 8th grade Social Studies teacher required us to write a news report every week; we could either watch the news and write a report or read the newspaper and write a report on a story we thought was important. He read several different newspapers daily and watched a lot of news, so there was no faking this assignment. I chose to watch the news every morning since I had to be up early due to both of my parents working in San Francisco, and having a commute that lasted years it seemed like. That Tuesday morning, I turned on the news, cereal bowl filled with more cereal than milk, and saw a tower in New York, a city I’d never been to, a Tower I’d never seen before, with smoke. Reporters were speculating and commenting. And then, I saw it. I saw that plane. I saw fire. I saw more smoke. I know what I saw, but I didn’t know what I just saw. I think I finished my cereal? I know my mom didn’t eat breakfast. 

My junior high school is in San Bruno, the city where San Francisco International Airport is actually located. Our blacktop recess yard has a direct view of the runways. Often we’d watch planes take off, and airplane noise was a common feature of our daily soundtrack. Seeing no planes that morning, hearing no planes during 1st, 2nd, 3rd periods was louder than the silence we were experiencing. 4th Period Spanish II came and Mrs. Cobos decided we should still take our quiz. We asked for a postponement. We were not focused on conjugations that day, but she thought it would serve as a perfect distraction from the day’s event. About midway through the quiz we heard it. The first plane of the day overhead. Our heads slowly turned up to the ceiling, knowing that the only planes in the air would be either authorized military personnel or another terrorist attack. As the plane passed by, for what seemed like years of a commute, we looked at Mrs. Cobos. “Maybe we should postpone the quiz, ” she replied to our voiceless cry. She recycled the quizzes, and we talked about how we felt. I bought a newspaper that day to have a physical record of what the world was like prior to this attack. I tossed it soon after. I hate that I did that.

When Come From Away went to Broadway, it became a multi-Tony nominated hit! I wanted to see it. I got to the rush line only to be informed they’d run out of rush tickets. I caught the person who was first in line that day and asked when they got in line. “Midnight.” Oof. I got back in line that night at 11:30pm and I was second. I waited it out and got my ticket. I was so tired that I missed my subway stop by three stops, but eventually made it off, took a strong two-hour nap, and went about my day. At 7pm I was sat. I teared up here and there but was mostly impressed and amazed at how perfectly respectful and emotionally sound this show was. And funny! And romantic!! And tragic. But it was at curtain call, when the band got the final bow, and pointed up to the balcony of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre waving to an elderly couple waving a tiny-but-mighty Canadian flag. It may have been the unfinished cereal in 8th grade, or maybe the plane flying over during 4th period, or the fact that in a 30-hour period I was seeing this show with two hours of sleep. Or maybe it was because I experienced nothing offensive about this musical, and maybe it was because I gave musical theatre the space to be more than jazz hands and dance breaks. 

When I saw it at the Guthrie in Minneapolis, MN a few months ago, I cried when President Bush's address came on, and never really stopped after that. The catharsis, the nostalgia, the Ugly Stick (!), the fact that I threw away that newspaper all hit: This show matters; it’s relevant. It's Human. And it’s funny! And it’s romantic!! And it’s tragic. And it simply contains and displays multitudes and complexities; it’s a human-driven piece of musical theatre. And it’s perfect. And I’m glad it exists.

Musicals exist because when we can’t speak, we sing. A lot of us couldn’t speak that dreadful Tuesday morning, and the creators of Come From Away knew that. The residents of Gander, Newfoundland, couldn’t speak either. They were too busy making accommodations, meals, and space for strangers. I’m so not offended that this musical exists because Come From Away puts to music what couldn't be dialogue; it sings because we couldn’t speak.