'Come From Away' tells emotional story of planes rerouted on 9/11 — and so much more

MEREDITH — Bryan Knowlton signed an apartment lease in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.

While he wasn't at Ground Zero that day, he remembers the trains stopping because of the attacks at the World Trade Center. “Everybody showed up for one another. The human response was to help,” he said.

Twenty-five years later, as the anniversary of the tragedy approaches, having that experience helped Knowlton as he leads the cast in the Broadway hit “Come From Away” at The Winnipesaukee Playhouse, in his new role as producing artistic director.

The show, based on a book, has music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, and begins as thousands of jets are diverted out of U.S. air space. Seven thousand airline passengers find themselves stranded in the remote town of Gander, Newfoundland. Townspeople rallied to ensure the “plane people” had enough to eat, clothes to wear, games to play and shoulders to cry on.

The show uses soaring music, humor and joy to remind us hope can arise, even in the hardest of circumstances.

“I think what I saw, in New York, at the time was very similar to what the people of Gander took on,” Knowlton said, noting the 25th anniversary of the crisis offers a perfect opportunity to celebrate the people of Gander. “It’s a reminder of how good people can be.”

Audiences who attend the performance, onstage through Saturday, June 27, can expect to laugh, cry and feel admiration for these very real people — like Hannah, a passenger waiting for news of her son, a New York firefighter; and Claude, the mayor of Gander, who helped ensure passengers’ basic needs were met, in part by turning the town’s ice rink into a massive walk-in freezer.

“This is a very real story,” Knowlton said. “‘Come From Away’ does not rely on spectacle to move us. Instead, it asks artists and audiences alike to lean into imagination, into language, into music and, most importantly, into one another. There is something incredibly beautiful about a piece of theater that trusts human connection to carry the story.”

Waiting for the rights

Lesley Pankhurst, patron and company services director for the playhouse, said she's wanted to stage the show for a number of years.

She said shows are restricted from the regional theater world until they’ve completed a Broadway run, as well as a national tour.

“We’ve been waiting for the rights to become available,” she said. “We have some people here involved in the national tour, and they tipped us off that the rights were becoming available, so we jumped on it.”

To Pankhurst’s knowledge, this performance of “Come From Away” will mark the New Hampshire premiere. “That’s super exciting. It is both a beautiful musical, aesthetically beautiful to watch, see and hear, but it’s also such an incredible story.”

Twelve actors hold main roles representing actual people, and also play other roles as well. “You fall in love with the individual actors as you watch them go in and out of the characters throughout the journey,” Pankhurst said. 

Knowlton said actors wear hats for different characters, to help the audience distinguish them. It also helps that all the characters from Gander speak with the local dialect, courtesy of dialect coach Heather Hill, based outside Toronto.

“From the very beginning of this process, our company of actors, musicians, designers, technicians and staff have approached this piece with tremendous care, generosity and collaboration,” Knowlton said. “What you are about to experience has been built by artists committed not only to telling this story truthfully, but to honoring the humanity at the center of it.”

Knowlton, in addition to leading the play, is the new producing artistic director at the playhouse.

Setting the scene

In some productions of “Come From Away,” the show is set in a gym in Newfoundland. In others, a bar.

At the Winnipesaukee Playhouse, the show is set in an old airplane hanger. To create the expansive feeling, Knowlton and set designer David Towlun decided to remove the stage’s back wall, which usually hides actors when they exit the stage.

The actors have nowhere to go and, hence, never leave the stage.

“Conceptually, that was intriguing to me,” Knowlton said. “I didn’t want us to hide anything. You see the actors moving crates, using props. It makes it a little more personal for the audience. They see the construct for what it means to be community.”

Pankhurst added the theater seating has been reconfigured for seats around three quarters of the stage. “It makes it super intimate. You can practically reach out and touch these actors,” she said. “People who’ve been before will enter and think something’s different, but can’t put their finger on it.”

25 years later

Pankhurst said it is particularly important to tell the story of 9/11 on the 25th anniversary of the attack.

“We have people in this production, a few people, who weren’t even alive at the time of 9/11. Many of the techs were not alive,” she said. “Of course they know about it, and they study it in school, but it’s one of those things; if you don’t tell history, it gets lost.”

Many people don’t know the larger story of all the attacks that took place that day, she said, nor do they know about the people of Gander, who took care of passengers in so many ways.

“There was goodness that came out of something so terrible,” Pankhurst said.

The cast is made up of professionals who do not live in the region. Local artists involved in the production are music director Chris Renaud, of Concord; stage manager John Findlay, of Meredith; and sound designer Emily Casko, of Laconia. In the band, on bass, is Ray Craigie, of Canterbury.

For tickets, visit winnipesaukeeplayhouse.org.