It's a show with an impact that’s difficult to describe: it feels like it creeps up on you unawares, before flooring you with emotion. I was just overwhelmed - and judging by the cheers and tears on the opening night, most of the audience seemed to be, too.
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"It is musically vigorous and excellently staged but...I found something bludgeoning about its relentless celebration of civic virtue...The songs, which have a folk-rock feel, are good and Christopher Ashley’s direction and Kelly Devine’s musical staging ingeniously use rearranged chairs to evoke both a suffocating plane cabin and the diverse spaces opened to the visitors...The show could hardly be better done even if, as a work of art, I found it lacking in complexity and argument."
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In these divisive times, with invasion scares and border walls and trumped-up national emergencies, the show’s celebration of selfless hospitality has certainly found its moment.
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...the songs, mostly choral and propulsive, have a crowd-pleasing warmth as well as a Celtic accent...For all its craft, there are moments when Come From Away feels like an advertisement for Canadian decency and its capacity to improve the lives of malcontent Americans.
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"It’s about then, but it also becomes about now. Quite simply, it reminds us what matters...The difficulty with staging a state of limbo is that it is antithetical to drama; the problem with tackling niceness is that it can become sentimental. Sankoff and Hein manage these obstacles adroitly, moving the action along with a restless sequence of events and peppering the show with funny, revealing details...This is a moving, irresistible show that unapologetically champions kindness."
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Come From Away is laugh-out-loud funny, emotional, and a true showcase of the strength of humanity. It’s a heartwarming show that is sure to become a West End favourite and make its way into London’s heart.
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"Through Canadian folk tunes and simple storytelling, they’ve created something incredibly pure, life-affirming and human – it’s the best tonic there can be to a world that feels so divided at the moment...Under Christopher Ashley’s expansive direction, it flows from scene to scene without stopping for breath, giving a taste of the adrenaline, upheaval, and exhaustion the Newfoundlanders must have felt...The ensemble is so skilled and so tight that it feels like a whole community in itself."
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Watching his painful story flicker through the bonhomie felt uncomfortably like accompanying a once-bullied child to a jolly reunion of a class you weren’t in.
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