Touring cast of Come From Away, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
Come From Away, the homegrown Canadian musical Broadway hit that travels the world on a jet stream of raves, major awards and sold-out runs, has come from away, again.
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It lands at Jube for the third time since 2019, in a Broadway Across Canada touring production that starts Friday. A story of generosity, hospitality, open-heartedess — with a true-life source — is back in its country of origin again. This time it’s with a cast that includes newcomers like Tyler Olshansky-Bailon, whose first time in Canada came onstage in Vancouver earlier this month, playing Diane Gray and singing Stop The World.
That number is a peak moment in a real-life Diane-Nick love story captured in the musical. That it has uncanny parallels to the actor’s own real-life love story…. in circumstances that have a certain resonating similarity, as the exuberant Olshansky-Bailon recounts, on the phone from Calgary where Come From Away has been playing this weekend. “I felt so connected.”
In the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on New York, and the unprecedented closing of American air space, 38 international flights were diverted to Gander, Newfoundland. And a hospitable little town of 9,000 “on an island between there and here” as the opening number has it, welcomed 7,000 stranded passengers from everywhere to The Rock — and housed and fed them for five days.
The real-life story of the musical by the Toronto-based husband and wife team of Irene Sankoff and David Hein was culled from interviews with the townsfolk and the passengers. Among other characters she plays in the ensemble, Olshansky-Bailon is Diane, a Texan divorcée returning home from England on a flight from London Gatwick. Two unforeseen days in Newfoundland changed her life. In a queue waiting for a blanket, she met Nick, a Brit business traveller who’d been on the same flight. In the course of a couple of days, they fell in love. By November 2001 they were married (the Marsons honeymooned in Newfoundland), and are frequently to be found in Come From Away audiences, wherever it’s playing.
Olshansky-Bailon, who grew up in Arizona and spent a decade and a half in L.A. after high school, was delighted by the chance to connect with the real Diane and Nick. “They’re lovely, so open; they love to talk about their experience. What’s cool is I didn’t expect I could connect on Facebook and just chat….”
“And I could relate to their experience to my own love story,” which has international geographical coordinates, too. “Meeting my husband was similar in a lot of ways.” They met working on a cruise ship. Olshansky-Bailon was performing; Luigi, who’s from Italy, is a chef…. I’m considerably older than my husband and Diane is considerably older than Nick.”
“We were new-ish as a couple on board a ship when COVID hit,” she says, of another global calamity, the devastating pandemic that changed the world, closed borders, severed human connectivity, fuelled the fear of the ‘outsider’. “We were separated from each other in different cities. What was going on? How can we make this work? How can this work? When will we see each other again?”
In this “my first time playing a real live living person,” she empathizes, too, with “the feeling of guilt” experienced by real-life Diane and Nick. “We found something really special at a time when an awful thing was happening all over the world.”
Olshansky-Bailon’s husband has since become an American. And after living for a time in New York/ New Jersey, they relocated to Miami where Luigi has opened a restaurant. It’s not news that COVID was devastating for the showbiz industry. “I was auditioning but there was no work, and I ended up pivoting to a remote job.” Olshansky-Bailon stayed in that gig till this Come From Away tour.
Touring cast of Come From Away, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy.
Come From Away is, and always has been, an unusual Broadway hit. For one thing, a 12-member ensemble both Newfoundlanders and their unplanned visitors with a mere change of hat or jacket. A lot of plaid is involved, and nary a sequin. In addition to Diane, a leading role, Olshansky-Bailon conjures a couple of Newfoundlanders, a quick transformation that depends, she says, on “body language, and tweaking my voice.” Ah, and there are the accents. Diane’s Texan accent isn’t hard she says. What was tricky was the special cadence of Newfoundlanders talking. “We had a dialect coach, and we went line by line.” The goal was to sound natural and spontaneous, not exaggerate an accent “that could easily go Irish.”
Instead of spectacle, Come From Away has ingeniously stylized low-tech stagecraft. The Beowulf Boritt design is framed by a stand of bare tree trunks, and a back wall of wood, which turns out to be slatted when slivers of light glint through. And the set consists largely of mismatched chairs rearranged to suggest plane interior, a school bus, the Legion, the local Tim Horton’s. In defiance of the standard Broadway playbook, there’s no real star, except a whole community; there’s no real villain except for the state of the world. And it’s about people being, well, nice.
“It’s very different,” agrees Olshansky-Bailon, who’d never seen the show live (only the streamed Apple+ TV performance) before she joined the cast. She points to “the pacing of it, so fast. Once it starts it’s barrels through; it’s almost like it has a pulse.”
Timing, as has often been pointed out, has played its part in the massive success of a piece that began in a student workshop production at Toronto’s Sheridan College in honour of the 10-year anniversary of 9-11. Via premieres at Seattle Rep and the La Jolla Playhouse, Come From Away arrived on Broadway in 2017 to celebrate hospitality and generosity at a moment when the world seemed particularly mean, distrustful, not to say hostile, to outsiders.
To say the least, 2024 won’t persuade anyone that’s changed. “There is unfortunately in this world a sense of other-ing,” as Olshansky-Bailon puts it, delicately. “Come From Away shows there are still people, quite a few of them, who can restore your faith in humanity…. In the face of it all, there are good humans out there, people who just want to help. I’ve never taken for granted the kindness of strangers.”
It’s a production that ends with a big Newfoundland screech-in party — a shot of acquired-taste rum, and the ritual kissing of a cod — at the Legion. The dancing, the high spirits, the Celtic-flavoured music from an eight-piece band: “it’s a blast. I’m having the time of my life!” declares Olshansky-Bailon. “The one way I’m different from Diane (the character): I would kiss the cod!”
PREVIEW
Come From Away
Broadway Across Canada
Created by: Irene Sankoff and David Hein
Directed by: Christopher Ashley
Where: Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium
Running: Sept. 27 to 29
Tickets: ticketmaster.ca
