‘Come From Away’: The hit Broadway musical about the other 9/11 story

It was around 9 a.m. on September 11, 2001, when Claude Elliot, the mayor of Gander — a small town in northeastern Canada — received a call informing him that 38 commercial planes would have to land at the town’s large airport, which was widely used for refueling transatlantic flights due to its location. The attacks on the Twin Towers in New York had just taken place, but Elliot did not yet know what was happening or how long the involuntary visitors would have to stay on board the planes. “We thought it would only be for a few hours, and we ended up with 7,000 people for five days,” the mayor recalled on Wednesday, exactly 23 years after the massacre.

Elliot is in Madrid to present the musical Come From Away, which tells the story of how Gander — a rural town home to just 9,000 people — opened its arms to foreigners from all over the world, with the locals and the visitors coming together in a show of great solidarity. The Spanish adaptation of the hit Broadway show will debut at the Marquina Theater in downtown Madrid on Thursday.

Elliot — who retired in 2017 — proudly recounts his experiences during those days: “Our people are there to help, we didn’t treat anyone differently. We gave them what they needed during their time in Gander, and we became friends.” He still remembers when someone first told him that they were going to turn Gander’s story into a musical. “I thought they would lose their jobs, I couldn’t imagine how they were going to make a musical about people making sandwiches,” he says with a laugh.

But the musical — despite the mayor’s doubts — premiered in New York in 2017, won director Christopher Ashley a Tony Award and had a run of more than 1,500 shows on Broadway. In 2022, The Stage Company took the musical to Argentina, where it won multiple awards. The same team of musicians and actors behind that Spanish version is now in Madrid for the show’s first performance in Spain.

Carla Calabrese — who, in addition to playing two characters, directs and produces the show — calls it the “most important” thing she has done in her career. For her, this parallel story of the September 11 jihadist attacks is a memorable example of the “solidarity and empathy in the stories of anonymous heroes.”

Anonymous heroes like Beulah Cooper (played by Gabriela Bevacqua), president of the Royal Canadian Legion, who spent five days preparing sandwiches to feed strangers. Or Bonnie Harris (Silvana Tomé), a veterinarian who inspected airplane cabins in search of pets to feed and care for. Or Brian Mosher (Carla Calabrese), one of only two journalists in Gander who broadcast the situation live for almost the entire week. Their lives intertwined with the lives of thousands of foreigners of different ages, races, nationalities and religions, while the world witnessed the most heinous terrorist attack in history.

One of the thousands of people were in Gander those five days was Beverley Bass, the first female captain of American Airlines, and a central character in the musical’s plot. She was on a flight from Paris to Dallas, like any other, when she received a message that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. “Twenty minutes later, they told me about the second plane, and they used the word terrorist for the first time,” says the veteran pilot, standing next to Mela Lenoir, the actress who plays her on stage.

The experience did not hamper Bass’ love of flying. “I have never been afraid in a cockpit, after September 11, all I wanted was to get on a plane again.” And so she did, continuing to pilot planes until 2008. Lenoir — who has played Bass for three years, did not expect to meet her at Marquina Theater, where she will perform in front of her for the first time. “She is a very important woman for me and I admire her a lot,” says Lenoir. Bass is looking forward to seeing her stage, and hearing the story in Spanish: “I know every word of the play in English, but it will be the first time I see it in Spanish.”

The show comes to Madrid 23 years after the terrorist attacks: the context is very different to what it was when it first hit the stage. But for Calabrese, the musical is more relevant than ever: “It is a story that is constantly being reinterpreted. Getting along with others is essential for coexistence.”

She links the message to the migration crisis in Europe and hopes that the example set by Gander and its citizens will help in some way to solve the problem: “Europe has to make empathetic decisions in this regard. Because migrants get on boats, crossing the Mediterranean, because they are in need; if not, they wouldn’t do it.”

Mela Lenoir agrees: “You might think that the play is about September 11 and the United States, but no, the play is about human solidarity and how a group of people transform a dark moment into something filled with light. It’s a universal theme.”

The mayor of Gander seems to embody this solidarity. Elliot smiles and hands out badges to everyone he meets. They read: “Town of Gander.” Eltiot believes pride he feels for his hometown is conveyed by the show: “People leave feeling better and thinking that they have to be like us. Hopefully, we will contribute to a better world.”

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