‘Come From Away’ transforms Max Bell Theatre into city’s largest kitchen party in raucous opening night celebration of Canada

The cast of Come From Away at Theatre Calgary

Why talk about what it means to be Canadian when you can sing it at the top of your frigging lungs?

Elbows weren’t only up, they were flying Friday night onstage at the Max Bell Theatre in Werklund Centre as Come From Away opened in front of a rowdy, loud crowd that was looking for a party -- and found one.

The made-in-Canada musical, with book, lyrics and music by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, which tells the story of how the residents of Gander, Newfoundland responded to having 7,000 stranded air passengers show up in their town on 9/11, has already been produced in Calgary and around the world.

It received seven Tony award nominations and is probably the most successful Canadian musical ever -- but Friday night, with Canada embroiled in a trade war with the U.S. and Alberta debating separation, it added a new level of emotion to the show that catapulted it up the theatrical Richter Scale to an 11 on a scale of 10.

The joint, at Werklund Centre, was jumping.

The first thing you notice about the latest production is that doing it on stage at the Max Bell as opposed to the Jubilee Auditorium is that it’s that much more cozy and intimate -- kind of like Gander must have felt when 7,000 visitors showed up to the rural Newfoundland town of 7,000 residents on a day unlike any other before or since.

So when Beulah (a wonderful Elizabeth Stepkowski-Tarhan), a Gander gal from the get go, steps upstage to explain what the hell just happened, it feels like you just wandered into the coffee klatch of some real talkative locals at the craziest moment of their lives -- and they’re the kind of locals who know how to spin a yarn.

Beautifully directed and choreographed by Tony nominee, Canadian-born Jesse Robb, this Come From Away features plenty of Alberta actors doing their best Newfoundland accents, starting with Mark Bellamy, as the town’s mayor Claude (and a few other Newfoundland small-town mayors as well) -- and Bellamy brilliantly channels his inner islander, as a harried mayor who hangs out at the local Tim Horton’s even though he neither drinks coffee nor eats donuts because that’s where you go to find out what’s really going on in your community.

Stellar cast

It’s hard to single out cast members from an ensemble that worked so seamlessly together, but actors like to see their name in the paper so here’s a few.

Selena Fisher, as the pilot of an American Airlines flight is kind of the glue that holds the frazzled travelers together and Fisher manages to be both a boss and a people manager without being too officious.

N. Girgis is excellent in both the part of Bonnie, the Gander animal keeper who defies the authorities to care for the animals on board all of the flights stranded at Gander (19 of them) and also Ali, an Egyptian chef who finds himself the object of suspicion following the 9/11 attacks.

Ethan Vasquez Taylor is Kevin, the boyfriend of Kevin, two L.A. gay guys -- “we’re the Kevins!” -- who start out terrified of being stranded in small-town Canada only to discover they’ve been stranded in the gayest town in Newfoundland. Vasquez Taylor is a playwright’s dream, nailing every laugh and his relaxed presence on stage fed the room Friday night.

Jawon Mapp, in a variety of roles, is funny, moving and captivating, never more than when the mayor of a small community (Bellamy again) who he’s billeting with instructs him to borrow the grills from the backyards of all the neighbours so they can have a cookout for the stranded passengers, prompting Mapp to consider what’s going to happen to a Black man borrowing barbeques from people’s back yards in some nowhere small town, only to have every local offer him a cup of tea before he moves on to the next yard.

Evangelina Kambites breaks your heart as a New Yorker whose fireman son is nowehere to be found following 9/11, Blair Young is moving as a perpetual business traveler who never took time to fall in love stumble into some, and Eric Wigston is great as the other gay Kevin and every other part he inhabits.

Andy Cohen is wonderful as Oz and a few other characters. They all are.

The music, with the band onstage, is gorgeous, from “Welcome to the Rock” to “Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere” is everything from foot stomping to heartbreaking.

Theatre Calgary artistic director Stafford Arima, in his introductory remarks, said there had been lots of laughter at the previews earlier in the week, but there had been some tears too -- and there were plenty of both Friday night and I expect there will be for the show’s entire nearly sold-out run throughout June.

Sometimes you get a night at a theatre when a show meets a beautiful Friday night with a superb production at a moment in a country that’s desperately seeking a story it can tell itself, and the result is what they call Theatre Calgary’s Come From Away.

Come From Away at Theatre Calgary through June 27.

For tickets and information, go here.