It's a show with an impact that’s difficult to describe: it feels like it creeps up on you unawares, before flooring you with emotion. I was just overwhelmed - and judging by the cheers and tears on the opening night, most of the audience seemed to be, too.
Read more

"It is musically vigorous and excellently staged but...I found something bludgeoning about its relentless celebration of civic virtue...The songs, which have a folk-rock feel, are good and Christopher Ashley’s direction and Kelly Devine’s musical staging ingeniously use rearranged chairs to evoke both a suffocating plane cabin and the diverse spaces opened to the visitors...The show could hardly be better done even if, as a work of art, I found it lacking in complexity and argument."
Read more

"It’s about then, but it also becomes about now. Quite simply, it reminds us what matters...The difficulty with staging a state of limbo is that it is antithetical to drama; the problem with tackling niceness is that it can become sentimental. Sankoff and Hein manage these obstacles adroitly, moving the action along with a restless sequence of events and peppering the show with funny, revealing details...This is a moving, irresistible show that unapologetically champions kindness."
Read more

Come From Away is laugh-out-loud funny, emotional, and a true showcase of the strength of humanity. It’s a heartwarming show that is sure to become a West End favourite and make its way into London’s heart.
Read more

"Through Canadian folk tunes and simple storytelling, they’ve created something incredibly pure, life-affirming and human – it’s the best tonic there can be to a world that feels so divided at the moment...Under Christopher Ashley’s expansive direction, it flows from scene to scene without stopping for breath, giving a taste of the adrenaline, upheaval, and exhaustion the Newfoundlanders must have felt...The ensemble is so skilled and so tight that it feels like a whole community in itself."
Read more

Watching his painful story flicker through the bonhomie felt uncomfortably like accompanying a once-bullied child to a jolly reunion of a class you weren’t in.
Read more

...Come From Away is wonderfully sung and produced. Most importantly of all, it has a feelgood factor that simply doesn't let-up. In divided times, that's a powerful antidote indeed.
Read more

At the same time, much as I consider its hour and 40-minute non-stop evocation of that sleepless and rather surreal episode informative, inspiring and even stirring too, there’s a glossiness about it that smooths over the upset of that era-defining world event.
Read more