Published: 22 July 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
The show, which had its Australian opening in Melbourne on Saturday night, is far from a weepy: it’s a feelgood musical, based on the story of the remarkable hospitality shown by the residents of a tiny Canadian town when 33 planes were diverted there on September 11, 2001.
The 9,000 residents of Gander, Newfoundland found themselves feeding and caring for 7,000 unexpected visitors when American airspace was closed following the terrorist attacks.
The “come from aways”, as local lingo designated them, were a mixed multitude, among them one Rabbi Leivi Sudak, who had been flying from London to New York to visit the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, before Rosh Hashanah. The rabbi (whose real story is told here) becomes a minor character in this award-winning musical.
All the characters in Come from Away are drawn from real people and the night we saw it , many of them had made the journey from Canada to meet their Australian actor counterparts.
It was tremendously moving to see the real men and women celebrated in the musical join the actors on stage. It brought the entire audience to their feet – but we already had the tissues out.
The scene which touched us most deeply involved an elderly Gander resident, long estranged from a Jewish community, who encounters the rabbi flown in from another world and confronts the Jewish identity he has always hidden.
This moment of connection is the climax of a spiritual riff, which begins when the mother of a firefighter missing in New York looks for a Catholic Church to pray for her son. A young gay man, who had not gone to church for many years, recalls the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi: “Make me a channel of your peace.”
He is joined by the rabbi, and ultimately the old man, in an exquisite rendition of “Oseh shalom” and then by Muslim and Hindi characters each chanting their own prayers. The voices rise in a magnificently harmonised madrigal expressing the human need for spiritual comfort and longing for peace. The weaving is masterful, done sufficiently skillfully to ensure each strain retains integrity and we feel similarities not sameness.
All right: we both needed tissues.
Jewish moments in popular culture are uncannily resonant for Jews – perhaps all the more so for those who are minimally observant. These are the words and melodies which provide the mood music to the most powerful moments in our lives
The capacity of a Jewish moment to cut through our defences and ambush our attention is familiar. For many of us, the word “Jew” functions like our own names, rising above the hubbub in a crowded room or jumping off the printed page. Some of us even start at a capital “J”.
An element of this reaction is merely disguised narcissism. Like children (and some adults) excited to meet someone who shares our name or birthday, we are drawn naturally to reflections of ourselves, preferring a world which places us - or our tribe - at the centre.
Among Jews, identification is complicated by pervasive anxiety which heightens the response to anything Jewish in popular culture. Stumble across a Jewish character in a novel or on television and we find ourselves sifting every word and action for a hint of stereotyping. It’s almost impossible for a fictional Jew to be less than angelic without prompting a fear of anti-Semitism.
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The rabbi in Come from Away has a modest inner beauty about him, as do most other characters in this sunny work capturing the best side of human nature. But let’s not pretend our ears didn’t prick up the second we saw a kippah. It’s a reaction that comes from the amygdala, the “animal brain” where our fight and flight responses reside.
Jewish moments in popular culture are uncannily resonant for Jews – perhaps all the more so for those who are minimally observant. These are the words and melodies which provide the mood music to the most powerful moments in our lives: the celebrations of birth, love, maturity and grief.
A lifetime of association provides a direct line to heightened sensation. If one prays every day, “Oseh shalom” may feel rather more routine but when the sound of Hebrew and the minor key of the traditional chant evoke deep personal associations, the artist’s work has been done.
But what’s more fascinating is how powerful these moments can be even for those without personal resonance, attachment or faith.
Religions know what they are doing. It’s not unduly cynical to point out that our texts, music and rituals evolved over thousands of years into the expressive vehicles we need to accompany us on our inward journeys at the most transformative times of our lives.
Directors who roll out a kaddish, candelabra or confessional are accessing a creative moment that has already been honed to the sharpest emotional point. No wonder we pull out the tissues not just at the theatre but also when a bar/bat mitzvah chants the barechu or the light fades on a Ne’ilah service at the end of Yom Kippur.
The first theatre evolved from religious ritual and the two have never completely separated. I’m inclined to think they never will.
Photo: Jeff Busby
