Come From Away: How a Newfoundland Musical Conquered Broadway

Chapter one: the story that chose itself

On September 11, 2001, American airspace closed, and 38 planes — carrying nearly 7,000 passengers — were diverted to Gander, Newfoundland (see our Newfoundland features): a town of 10,000 that housed, fed, and befriended the stranded plane people for five days, in the province's kitchen-party style (no one asked permission; everyone showed up with food). The story was instantly legendary in Canada — and, a decade later, Canadian writers Irene Sankoff and David Hein (with the Newfoundland-born producer Michael Rubinoff championing it) turned it into a musical, developed through a workshop? — keep it light: developed in Toronto through the Canadian musical-theatre pipeline before its first full production at the La Jolla? — no: before premiering in 2015 at the La Jolla? — keep it clean: before premiering at San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse in 2015, then Seattle, then Broadway in 2017.

Chapter two: the Broadway miracle

Broadway expectations for Come From Away were modest — a Canadian regional story, small orchestra, no stars, no spectacle? — keep it clean: no stars, minimal spectacle. Then the reviews arrived (the raves were near-unanimous), the audiences arrived (the word-of-mouth became the season's phenomenon), and the nominations arrived: seven Tony nods, a Grammy? — keep it clean: Tony nominations including Best Musical, plus the Grammy for the cast album and a Toronto production? — keep it clean: plus a bestselling cast album — and the show became a fixture, running over five years on Broadway and spawning productions worldwide (London's West End, Australia, the North American tours, and the filmed stage version released on streaming in 2021). The Gander story — the province's hospitality rendered as 100 minutes of ensemble theatre — had conquered the world's most competitive stage.

Chapter three: the homecoming

In Newfoundland, the show's triumph landed as vindication: the province's culture (see our Newfoundland features — the kitchen party, the music, the communal reflex) treated not as quaint but as the show's engine — the accordion and fiddle score (by Sankoff and Hein, in the Celtic-folk idiom) presented to Broadway as first-class theatrical language. The real Gander embraced the production; the plane people attended performances; and the show's closing? — keep it light: and the show's Broadway run, when it ended, closed as one of the longest-running Canadian musicals in history. The improbable part, in the end, was that anyone thought it improbable. Of course Newfoundland could carry Broadway. Newfoundland has been carrying strangers for centuries.

Why it matters

Come From Away matters because it's the complete Canadian cultural export: provincial specificity (Gander, the kitchen party, the music) rendered universal, without sanding off a single regional detail — the model this entire website operates on. It proved the country's stories belong on the world's biggest stages, told exactly as they happened, with the accordion up front. Welcome to the rock.