Hit musical Come from Away kicks off Melbourne theatre for 2021

Last March, when the musical Come from Away had its final performance before lockdown, actress Sarah Morrison had a strange feeling on stage. Public places were beginning to shut down around Melbourne in the wake of the pandemic, and theatres were some of the first to close their doors.

Come from Away’s season was cut short by a  week, but there was no sense of how long that would last.

“I thought, ‘It will blow over, it won’t be so long’, but I remember taking my bow that night and bursting into tears,” Morrison says. “Maybe that was the intuitive part of me [communicating] the gravity of what was happening.”

It would be the last time she’d appear on stage before an audience for almost a year, during which she felt “incredibly disheartened”.

With the production now open again at The Comedy Theatre for an encore season, Morrison expected to feel relieved. What she hadn’t bargained for was how relevant the story of Come from Away would suddenly be.

Set immediately after the September 11 terror attacks, it tells the true tale of the passengers whose aircraft was suddenly re-routed to the small Canadian town of Gander, and the outpouring of support they would receive from the townspeople who greeted them.

“The message of this story has so many parallels to what’s happened, if you look at what we all did in Melbourne to keep each other safe. We put each other’s needs first,” Morrison says.

She thinks that even audiences who’ve seen it before will “come with some fresh eyes and connect to it in a different way”. In preview nights, that was evident: “The energy at the beginning of the show was palpable; through their applause, you could feel  the audience’s readiness to be a part of something altogether.”

Not only is Melbourne theatre back, but the industry has responded in a collectively creative way that spells a triumphant and meaningful return. When the doors of the Malthouse Theatre closed last year, artistic director Matthew Lutton says, “it felt like an existential crisis”.

“A theatre company’s sole purpose is to create live shows and performances, so not being able to do that almost removes its entire meaning.”

Soon, however, the crisis gave way to creativity.

“The disruption that occurred was so massive that ideas we’d had and dreams we hadn’t been able to do suddenly became possible,” Lutton says. “We always wanted a stage outside, and also thought that it would be wonderful if one day we could do a massive, immersive show for people in Melbourne. [The pandemic] opened up those opportunities because we couldn’t return to the old system.”

Turns out they managed to implement both: Malthouse’s new performance hub, located in their courtyard, offers a fairly pandemic-proof setting, with cabaret style seating and a line-up that already includes ARIA-winning Kaiit, Eddie Perfect, Judith Lucy and Denise Scott.

As for the immersive show? Because the Night will take place in a purpose-built maze of more than 30 rooms, where audience members will be masked and moved through scenes set in the 1980s. Lutton says the set-up “allows us to cope with changing audience numbers, where the audience doesn’t have to be seated”.

Over at the Melbourne Theatre Company, associate director Petra Kalive is also busy testing out new ideas. The theatre has dealt with the challenges of COVID-19 by taking out the middle and centre aisles to further separate the audience, and is also looking at staggered entrances.

There are advantages to the new layout, she says, in that “potentially, it feels like a much more exclusive experience if there aren’t as many people in the audience … it’s like a new form of theatre is emerging”.

One of the biggest theatrical productions for 2021 will be Moulin Rouge at the Regent Theatre. Once scheduled to open in five productions globally by year’s end, Melbourne will now be the only one in the world, and the first after Broadway.

“That’s pretty unusual for Australian audiences to see,” says its producer, Carmen Pavlovic. Through shutdown, “we had to keep all our balls in the air – we had the set designer and technical director doing theatre surveys by Zoom!”

But lockdown never dampened her enthusiasm for the project.

“I think Moulin Rouge’s moment is now – a highly stylish, big spectacle with recognisable songs,” she says. “There’s a revolutionary feel in the air, and Moulin Rouge’s story is that, too,” she says. “It’s [set in] the world of music and fashion and art, and I thought it would feel very much at home in Melbourne, and particularly at the Regent Theatre.”

Right now, it’s Come from Away that is taking  centre stage, and American cast member Kolby Kindle feels grateful to be a part of it, and the wider community.

“My hat’s off to all the Melburnians; it’s really admiration at seeing how hard everyone worked and came together,” he says, adding: “Melbourne has set an example for the rest of the world, especially when it comes to the arts, and I feel like a lot of eyes are on Melbourne to see how they managed to do that and get a show back on its feet.”

For Zoe Gertz, who plays pilot Beverley in Come from Away, “Melbourne audiences should see themselves in this show, in terms of the acts of kindness and the selflessness. This is part of the payoff for the hard time that everyone has endured … and for all of us on stage, the way we’re approaching the story has completely changed  because of the events of last year. It feels very special.”

Come From Away runs at the Comedy Theatre until March 21.