The best of humanity after 9/11 on the Chichester stage

The show is one of those musicals that stays with you – for many people their instant favourite. And Nic, who has lived in Eastbourne since 2016 after returning from a number of years living in Spain, is relishing every moment.

Come From Away tells the remarkable true of the 7,000 air passengers from all over the world who were grounded in Canada in the wake of 9/11 and the small Newfoundland community that invited these ‘come from aways’ into their lives with open hearts.

“And the fact that it is true is what makes it so special,” Nic says. “Some of the stuff we are saying and some of the lyrics in the songs are actually verbatim from the interviews that the writers did with the people (of the Newfoundland town) of Gander. They went and did hundreds of hours of interviews with the people about what happened for the tenth anniversary, and when they did that, they realised that they had the germ of an idea for a show. They thought that they were going to be there for three days doing the interviews but in the end they stayed for five weeks with literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of interviews at the end. They were speaking to the people that you now see in the show, people like the mayor which is the part that I play. They wanted to centre the story on particular individuals but they wanted to tell the story of all of it. And that's the point. It rings true because it is true. We feel on stage that we have a real responsibility in telling the story. We don't really dwell on the events of 9/11 but it's what happened afterwards. One of our producers says ‘This is not the 9/11 musical. It's the 9/12 musical.’ 9/11 was awful and showed the absolute worst of humanity but this is the musical that shows the absolute best.”

And to show that, the musical has a certain relentlessness, Nic says: “As soon as you hear the drum beat at the start of the show and we walk on, it just powers through for 100 minutes without stopping, and I think that's what keeps it fresh and alive. There are only two points in the show where the audience gets a chance to applaud and that's it and then the next time that they applaud is at the end. It's like a runaway train. I've never known a show in my 35 years plus of working in this business that demands so much concentration, where you just can't lose concentration for a second or you are (finished). You just can't. Even when you're waiting in the wings to go on, you have got to be thinking about what you are saying in preparation or when you go on you are lost.”

The tour began in March and goes through until January: “I don't think it has changed much since we started. It is just so tight, and there are certain restrictions. We do all the scene-changing ourselves. It's just 12 chairs and a few tables and that's it. We create everything ourselves and everything has to be put down on a particular mark. But I do think perhaps the show has speeded up because we've got into the rhythm. When we started it was maybe 143 minutes and now it's a running time of maybe 140 minutes. We've shaved maybe one or two minutes off!”