Come From Away: the community of friends

There are musicals that strike right from the start, due to their external majesty. Others impress through choreography, and some impress us by entering through other senses, such as through the ears, due to the catchiness of the songs. There are thousands of ways to get around with a musical theater production, and Come from afar it does, but for none of the above reasons.

There are no scenographic movements, more than moving chairs, the dances are not essential and the musical themes are good, but it’s not like you leave the theater humming them from memory.

It is the subject, or rather, the approach to it. The matter inside Come from afar It’s not that Gander, a Canadian citizen, in Newfoundland – the island of Newfoundland in Spanish – received thousands of passengers from 38 planes after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when US airspace was closed. The theme is how you can be a good person, help others without expecting anything in return.

With this in mind, married couple David Hein and Irene Sankoff wrote the book, the music and the lyrics, with a focus on not Broadwaywhere it finally came and became a hit, and the longest running Canadian musical in Manhattan, but in telling this story of a community.

How to celebrate the power of a community of good people.

Main cast

And surely that’s why it’s not there Come from afar protagonist, but, in the manner of ancient Greek theater, it is a choir. Come from afar It is a choral opera, with more than a dozen actors on stage, each playing more than one character. They can be Gender inhabitants or passengers. Teacher at the school where hundreds of unexpected newcomers take refuge, he changes his clothes and is the captain of the ship. And so.

Mutual stories are equally attractive. And the most important thing is that they are authentic, because Hein and Sankoff went to Gender and collected testimonials, which they grouped into a handful of characters.

And if we talk about community, it is not just that of Gender, but the interrelation with newcomers – who cannot access their luggage, so they also need clothes, not just food – is what allows us to speak of that communion. And not in a religious sense, but because they have something in common. And it is not the tragedy: it is the tragedy that brought them together. Kindness is what unites them.

That is why, perhaps, perhaps, in one of these, it is difficult to make one performer stand out over another among the performances. Melania Lenoir has his great individual moment, showing for the umpteenth time why he is one of the figures of the genre in Argentina. But the entire cast, directed by Carla Calabrese, also Patricio Witis and Lali Vidal, who act little or nothing, are there to increase the idea of ​​emotional participation.

The fact is that they are almost always on stage, they move chairs and can sit on the plane or on board a bus. The show on Sunday 5 June was apparently missing a light follower, sick with Covid, and the replacement was not used to “cues”. That a specific light reaches a character’s face two seconds late, when there are so many on stage and they take turns singing, can certainly be annoying.

In Come from afar there is no cynicism. Not even when the Islamophobia begins to sprout. There are traits of realism that the authors have taken care to spread throughout the work: the gay couple who are afraid of being discovered in that small town; the Arab who is the chef of a 5-star restaurant and who they do not want to welcome. They even allow themselves to build an incipient love story between an Englishman and a Texan.

There aren’t many musical theatrical performances currently on the schedule. That’s why, perhaps, Come from afar it stands out, but also because it has values ​​which, I insist, are not very common to see, to be in any game.

“Come from afar”

Good

Musical. Authors: David Hein and Irene Sankoff. Adaptation: Marcelo Kotliar and Carla Calabrese. Address: Carla Calabrese. Launch: Melania Lenoir, Edgardo Moreira, Pablo Sultani, Marisol Otero, Gabriela Bevacqua, Manu Victoria and other artists. Duration: 105 ‘. Stay: Maipo, from Friday to Sunday. Tickets: from $ 1,500 to $ 3,500.