Come From Away — MusicalFare’s Triumphant Downtown Arrival

By Anthony Chase

MusicalFare’s long-anticipated migration to Shea’s 710 Theatre has been a saga worthy of its own musical. As artistic and executive director Randall Kramer acknowledged from the stage on opening night, the journey from the company’s cozy Amherst home to the gleaming downtown playhouse has been circuitous. But here they are, at last, arriving in glory. Come  From  Away opens MusicalFare’s new era at Shea’s 710 not with a whisper but with a roar of music, laughter, and unguarded humanity.

Full disclosure: I have never much loved Come  From  Away. On Broadway it struck me as saccharine, like a Hallmark card performed by relentlessly chipper actors in character shoes. It always seemed a little too proud of itself to be uplifting. I have admired its craftsmanship but never felt its heart.

Until now.

Scaled to the deep thrust of Shea’s 710, Randall Kramer’s production makes the musical intimate, specific, and, for the first time in my experience, truly sincere. Without the excess gloss of commercial staging, the piece gains something priceless: authenticity.

It also helps that MusicalFare has filled the stage with the best Buffalo has to offer, a cast so familiar and likable they could populate a Western New York Musical Theater Mount Rushmore. Ever since Stephen Sondheim famously made the chorus the protagonists in Company, the modern musical has relied on ensembles that move as one mind. Come  From  Away follows that model scrupulously, and this dozen players, each playing multiple characters, creates a shifting collage of humor, heartbreak, and hometown decency.

This collaboration between Shea’s Performing Arts Center and MusicalFare is more than a relocation; it is the most important moment for Buffalo’s professional musical theater in a generation. MusicalFare now occupies the former Studio Arena space with grace and ambition. The 500-seat house gives the company greater scale without losing intimacy, and with Come From Away, they fill it to the rafters with hope.

As audiences know, Come From Away with book, music, and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, is based on true events from the week following September 11, 2001, when thirty-eight international flights were diverted to remote Gander, Newfoundland. With its population suddenly doubled, the residents opened their schools, homes, and hearts to thousands of stranded strangers. The story that unfolds is a choral tapestry of humanity, a musical about the decency of ordinary people when faced with extraordinary need.

Randall Kramer’s staging understands the piece’s essence: it’s not a show about the September 11 attacks but about September 12, about the kindness that followed. He uses the thrust stage of Shea’s 710 to intimate effect, filling the space with a never stopping swirl of airplanes, docking buses, and bustling kitchens – all created by a few chairs, some scaffolding, and the audience’s imagination. The acoustic clarity and natural warmth of the space amplify the music’s Celtic pulse and communal heartbeat.

This production’s success rests on a remarkable ensemble that alchemizes into a living community in motion.

Bobby Cooke anchors the action as Mayor Claude, radiating humor, pragmatism, and warmth. With sly comic timing and a grin that could calm a storm, he personifies Newfoundland’s steady generosity. Every bit the affable mayor you want in a crisis, Cooke keeps the evening buoyant as Claude, melding his twinkle, his graceful physicality, his character’s love of whiskey, and his timing to perfection.

Buffalo’s preeminent musical leading man, Steve Copps, here plays Kevin T, the steadier half of a gay couple unraveling amid the crisis. Copps cheerfully brings quiet authority to every note; his restraint speaks volumes, and his ultimate and unexpected triumph proves to be one of the evening’s most satisfying comic punctuation moments.

Augustus Donaldson, whose show‑stopping work in Dreamgirls still reverberates, matches Copps brilliantly as Kevin J and, even more strikingly, as Ali, an Egyptian chef facing xenophobic suspicion with quiet dignity. Donaldson is magnetic, mercurial one moment, heartbreaking the next, as he moves between flamboyance and solemnity with ease.

Wendy Hall’s Beulah, the town’s maternal heart, models compassion without sentimentality. She listens, pours a cup of tea, says a prayer, and we feel the entire moral weight of Gander resting on her shoulders.

John Kaczorowski makes Oz, the town constable, exuberantly human, a blend of bureaucrat, comic relief, and poet laureate of small-town logistics. His buoyant energy exemplifies the generosity of the show as he weaves himself into a variety of vivid men who pepper the proceedings: the coach who speaks a bit of Spanish; one of the clean-freak cardiologists; and so forth.   

With an adorable stage presence, Austin Marshall’s Bob is the quintessential wary New Yorker, at first skeptical of small-town altruism. His eventual softening delivers one of the production’s most gratifying transformations, as this hard-boiled egg melts convincingly into gratitude.

Bob Mazierski and Debbie Pappas Sham form the show’s emotional core as Nick and Diane, two middle-aged strangers who fall unexpectedly in love. Their chemistry is effortless, their fragility disarming. Mazierski underplays perfectly; Pappas Sham’s Diane glows with warmth and wonder (and irresistible charisma while under the influence).

Kayla McSorley’s Janice, a novice broadcaster thrust into the story of a lifetime, captures youth, idealism, and the dawning seriousness of experience, as accidental witness evolves into the show’s conscience.

Having a very strong year in Buffalo theater, Alexandria Watts follows her star turn as Aphra Behn in Or, at Irish Classical Theatre Company, to lend Hannah, a woman waiting helplessly for news of her New York City firefighter son, a quiet gravity that stills the room. Her grace and sorrow connect every story to the world beyond Gander.

Emily Yancey’s Bonnie, the overachieving SPCA worker desperate to save animals from the stranded aircraft, brings brisk humor and immense charm; she’s the show’s comic heart, grounded in empathy. Her ardent yet humorous sprint keeps the show’s pulse lively.

Michele Marie Roberts as Beverley

A longtime MusicalFare favorite, Michele Marie Roberts gives a spellbinding turn as Beverley Bass, the first female captain for American Airlines. Her anthem, “Me and the Sky,” is a study in controlled power, sung with crystalline authority and an undercurrent of exhaustion that makes it all the more moving. Indeed, she emerges as the leading character in this production.  

Together these twelve actors shift seamlessly through dozens of roles -- pilots, stranded passengers, and tireless Newfoundlanders -- with a fluency that astonishes. The ensemble acts as one pulsating organism; the movement sequences by Michael Oliver‑Walline surge like tides.

Visually, the production is an achievement of elegant economy. Chris Cavanagh’s set imaginatively reconfigures chairs and scaffolding into cockpit, bar, or bus with cinematic fluidity. His lighting wraps the thrust stage in a stunning Northern glow that morphs through the color palette to emphasize emotion and tone. Kari Drozd’s costumes provide instant character cues: a scarf, a fisherman’s cap, a uniform. Susan Drozd’s wigs and precise make‑up work help define the multitudes in seconds.

Theresa Quinn’s music direction, rendered live by a superb six‑piece band, captures the percussive thrill of folk tradition. The musicians: Quinn, Larry Albert, Jay Wollin, Jay Clark, Katie Clark, and Jim Runfola, create an intoxicating soundscape that pulses beneath the story like the heartbeat of a unified humanity. Quinn's tempi keep the show's momentum urgent without sacrificing the actors' storytelling clarity.

The merging of MusicalFare and Shea’s marks a cultural realignment that restores to Buffalo’s Theater District something it lost when Studio Arena closed in 2008, a resident local company producing first‑rate shows for a broad audience.

MusicalFare’s downtown debut proves that intimacy and spectacle can coexist, that sincerity need not exclude sophistication, and that telling stories of kindness is, in its way, an act of courage. Come From Away is a joyous, heart‑pounding triumph, the perfect beginning to MusicalFare’s new era of excellence in the Buffalo Theater District.