Come from Away
Charlottetown Festival
Sobey Family Theatre, Charlottetown
July 9, 2026
One of the quirks and perks of Atlantic Canada is the way everything is similar-but-different depending on which province or region or town you’re in, each one unique but all of them alike in one or more aspects of landscape, dialect or culture.
That may be part of why Tell Tale Harbour thrived at the Charlottetown Festival. Its feisty, folksy Atlantic Canadian town felt familiar to PEI audiences, and the Festival is tapping a similarly resonant cultural well this summer with its superb new mainstage production of the hit musical Come From Away, set in the small town of Gander, Newfoundland.
(Quick geographical aside: the main events of this play, set in 2001, happen just a few months before the province formally changed its name to Newfoundland and Labrador. The musical’s lyricists really dodged a bullet there.)
Written by Irene Sankoff and David Hein from a concept proposed by producer Michael Rubinoff, Come From Away was researched and workshopped for years before its award-winning 2017 Broadway debut. The show is based on the true story of how the 9/11 terrorist attacks disrupted air travel in the U.S.A., forcing 38 planes with 7000 passengers to land at Gander International Airport, nearly doubling Gander’s population overnight.
Stranded in Gander for days, the largely American passengers cope with the stress of their situation and the horror of the 9/11 tragedy while the residents of Gander and surrounding communities unite to feed, house and comfort the many refugees as best they can. Some of the musical’s characters and stories are tweaked composites, but all are based on real people and events from the 2001 Gander incident and its aftermath.
Hence this musical feeling as genuine as it does—not just in terms of how vividly it sketches Gander (an Atlantic community reminiscent of PEI’s small towns), but also in the range of stories featured here, not all of them pleasant. This is a literally and figuratively uplifting show about kindness, generosity and rallying to overcome adversity, but there are also moments of ugliness, loss and tragedy that paint a true-to-life picture while making the characters’ assorted triumphs shine all the brighter.
The Sankoff/Hein duo’s songs are seldom lastingly memorable as tunes, but their lyrics and the spirited actors and musicians make the musical numbers energetic and powerful in the moment. With apologies to the likes of Great Big Sea and Republic of Doyle, Newfoundland has never seemed cooler than it does in this musical’s fierce and funny “Welcome to the Rock” scene-setter, and there are moving personal moments during songs like “Me and the Sky” and “Something’s Missing.” This is a show that makes you feel stuff.
A lot of that feeling comes from the production’s ace ensemble, including Ma-Anne Dionisio, Barbara Fulton, Jessica Gallant, Kaleigh Gorka, Stephen Guy-McGrath, Kaylee Harwood, Ryan Abdullah Hooper, Nathanael Judah, Andrew McAllister, Laurie Murdoch, Catherine O’Brien, and Drew Plummer, most playing multiple characters in the story’s big, sprawling cast of Islanders (Newfoundland variety) and stranded travelers.
All 12 of the key players show strong comedic and dramatic chops, they all get moments to shine, and they all bring their own unique gifts to the table, like O’Brien’s sharp comic timing, Judah’s everyman charm or Harwood’s chameleonic versatility. Director Adam Brazier has assembled a singularly strong, diverse and eclectic cast, backed by a dynamic live band (led by Rachel O’Brien) who even wander on stage a time or two.
Much of the action is set against and within a supersize map diorama highlighting Newfoundland, a space that looks like it might be confining or limiting at first glance; but set designer Cory Sincennes’ surprisingly versatile backdrop converts into airplane exteriors and interiors as needed, and Jen Mote’s choreography slots smoothly into that finite space, full of small but vigorous movements that keep the show pulsing with energy.
My daughter Elsa recently returned from a month of studies in Europe, during which she binged on London theatre, enchanted by the Globe and wowed by the West End. After seeing Come From Away, she talked about how cool it was to be able to see great professional theatre right here in PEI, in a venue she has loved since she was a child. “I don’t know if people here realize how lucky they are,” she said. I couldn’t agree more.