Arts & Culture

What: Come From Away
Where: Royal Alexandra Theatre, 260 King St W.
When: Now, until at least Sun., Mar. 2
Highlight: Cailin Stadnyk’s wry presence as pilot Beverley Bass
Rating: NNNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: It’s one of the very best musicals of the 2010s.

THERE WAS ALWAYS  something cruelly ironic about the COVID-19 pandemic, that great separator of people, forcing the closure of Mirvish’s production of Come From Away, about 9/11 airspace shutdowns bringing together thousands of travellers in the tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland.

Even now that director Christopher Ashley’s gleaming production of Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s hit musical is back at the Royal Alexandra Theatre with a significant portion of its 2018 Canadian cast, it’s difficult to get that painful history out of mind. Especially when the script gestures at our collective tendency to stockpile toilet paper during emergencies. But Come From Away’s barrelling 100 minutes hold up on their own merit; the show’s aged with powerful, searching grace.

A much more effective advertisement for Tim Hortons than The Last Timbit, the musical feels particularly suited to a long run. This is partly because it’s paced like a sung-through musical, but not actually sung-through. While music plays constantly, giving it the momentum of a Hamilton or a Les Mis, on a moment-to-moment level, the show’s surprising number of spoken lines mean it’s more rhythmically loose than both those juggernauts. On a technical level, Come From Away is a machine — but one with space for play.

A unique joy of this remount is watching new cast members collaborate with old ones. If you look closely, it’s possible to tell who’s done the show thousands of times and who hasn’t. That’s not to say the new performers are visibly nervous, or the old ones bored — just that the two groups occupy the space a little differently. Far from diminishing the show’s cohesion, this intermixture of experience levels makes a great deal of sense for a musical about people from varied backgrounds coming together.

Cailin Stadnyk lives somewhere in-between — though she’s been a Come From Away standby for years, this is her first time stepping into the cast full-time. In any case, she’s a real standout, bringing a wryly rugged presence to pilot Beverley Bass (if only we could applaud at the end of “Me and the Sky,” her 11-o’clock number) and a nimble sheepishness to Gander school teacher Annette (the actors each play multiple roles).

The design — moored by an array of wooden chairs, each different — appears to be the same as always. But I’d forgotten just how important the late Howell Binkley’s lighting design is to the equation. After tightly guiding the viewer’s eye from chair to chair as Ashley dashes from location to location, he’ll zoom out, illuminating the whole stage from a striking angle. These visual expansions and contractions combine with Bob Foster’s dynamic music direction to sculpt the show’s mountainous peaks and gaping valleys.

Now seems as good a time as any to declare Come From Away one of the very best musicals of the 2010s. If I had any doubts about whether there’d be enough audience interest to sustain the show’s return, they’re gone; Come From Away isn’t something you experience just once.