Come From Away
Koorliny Arts Centre, Kwinana
Sunday, September 20, 2026
Koorliny Arts Centre became Gander, Newfoundland, for the second time in three years, as Come From Away returned for an encore season that started a quarter-century to the day after the real-life events that inspired this musical. The piece walked a finer line than initially anticipated between a heartwarming celebration of Newfie hospitality and solemn remembrance of that clear blue Tuesday morning which shattered the world, with its multitude of consequences that have continued echoing through to the present day.
With Nanaimo bars at the concession stand, Canadian accents aplenty in the lobby, and a Molson’s neon sign prominently on stage, the performance started where only it naturally could, in a Tim Horton’s the morning of September 11, with the mayor and the local union boss clashing over an upcoming bus strike. All that was quickly put to one side, however, with the reports from New York and Washington and the closure of US airspace, with all transatlantic flights already in the air diverted to this isolated corner of an already isolated province.
Not even overnight, as it had happened very much in the daytime, the population of Gander almost doubled, with both islanders and “plane people” thrust together unexpectedly in this defining moment of history. They might have been a thousand miles from Ground Zero, but the script and performances skilfully picked away at the collective trauma that quickly grew even this far distant.
Welcome to the Rock was a fun and boisterous opening number, introducing us to the locals and how they discovered the news that morning. Janice (Phoebe Tempra) acted almost as an audience surrogate, a television reporter brand new to town already given the biggest story of her career. Tempra played this role with a wide-eyed enthusiasm, yet also with a sense of being two steps behind where she needed to be at any given moment.
This jarring disorientation was not contained to merely one character, however. Across the songs 38 Planes, 28 Hours/Wherever We Are, and Darkness and Trees, every role, local or foreign, was portrayed as either numb, exhausted, or overwhelmed. Stuck on the tarmac with precious little to do, the staging exuded a claustrophobia only partially assuaged by alcohol, with some passengers discovering what was happening in the world, while most remained almost blissfully unaware.
With the bus strike from the opening scene postponed, seven thousand people were slowly ferried out to where they needed to be, across the entire region, the last of these journeys finishing in the darkness of approximately 3am.
Kevin Tuerff (Tadhg Lawrence) was in extremely fine voice for the musical number Prayer, the stage reconstructed as church pews, the characters reaffirming their faith and support for one another in the unprecedented times. All the world’s major religions made an appearance in this crowning moment of song and sentiment, a brief aside where the performance could breathe away from the ongoing crisis.
This touching, peaceful moment contrasted almost wildly with the directly adjacent I Am Here, wherein plane passenger Hannah (Mahali) fretted about her missing firefighter son in Queens, on this day of all days. Whereby the church scene had brought an inner calm to the piece, this song all but wept with hot anxiety, a gritty pall as uncomfortable as a sandstorm that had consumed all in its path.
The live musical score was very evocative, very Gaelic, and very, very Newfie. The band came to the fore in two sections, the first of which, during Screech In, when the cast found themselves in a roadside bar, in another short break away from the underlying stress. Fiddler Ben Clapton and Dylan Randall on the Ugly Stick came out to stage amongst the actors, whilst Mayor Claude (Neil Young) provided rum shots and cod kisses to the unsuspecting newcomers, hilariously confirming their status as Newfoundlanders.
Even during these moments of levity however, reality was only a heartbeat away. While one of the Kevins could relax into the night with more drinks than necessary, the other could only think of his sister in Brooklyn and the gravitational pull he felt there away from both Gander and hometown Los Angeles. The same performer, Bailey Bridgman-Peters, gave some of the most nuanced acting across the entire performance in his secondary role as an Egyptian chef, racially profiled and often shunned by the others on stage.
With twelve actors on stage for most of the evening, a few solos or small cast moments notwithstanding, the setting was kinetic and almost always in motion. The chairs moved quickly between a Tim Hortons, the seating within a plane, buses, schools, and bars, with the audience easily swept along. The cast were uniformly superb, carrying multiple roles on their backs, and fully committed to them all.
A tale half-caught between near global trauma and the power of built community, Come From Away landed in the glass half-full category between inspirational and tragic. It did not shy away nor minimise the awful that occurred but nor did it wallow in those events. The characters returning to the Rock for the final number, set ten years after the rest of the plot, allowed the good to fully burst through in a constant and joyous delight.
The standing ovation the audience enthusiastically provided was fully deserved, and the actors and band gave their own rollicking encore in return.