Come From Away

[psocoptera]

Awesome show, neat work with lighting and chairs to evoke a lot of different settings, and costume elements to pick out particular recurring characters from the general ensemble. I didn't particularly notice until pretty late in the game the two broken-off trunks/poles and then I was like OH, that was nicely and subtly done. Powerful stuff pretty much from the get-go - I started to tear up pretty early and was like "uh oh", but it kept a really good balance of getting emotional and then lightening it up a little. It's a heck of a show... if someone had just said "yeah, they're making a new musical about 9/11!" I think the only possible answer would be WHAT THE EVER-LOVING FUCK, but it's coming at it on enough of a slant to really have a story to tell without feeling maudlin or exploitative. "Me and the Sky" is the song that stuck with me and works well even out of context (here's a studio performance by the original actress on YouTube) aaaand now I'm teared up again.

Comments

[psocoptera]

Thinking more about the relevance of this show as evacuations and displacements inevitably become more common - on the one hand it's a sort of social blueprint for how to treat evacuees (with some parts being what not to do) and on the other hand, we may need to have different expectations for a truly unique emergency vs half the population of NoCal having to leave their homes every time the wind picks up or at least one Caribbean island having their infrastructure completely wiped out every year. :(