If you only see one show this fall in South Florida, make it this one.
Slow Burn Theatre Company has opened its 2026/2027 season at the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts with Come From Away — and it’s not just good, it’s extraordinary. Running October 10-25, 2026 and directed by Slow Burn Co-Founder Patrick Fitzwater, this production is everything this show is meant to be: funny, wrenching, joyful, and deeply, stubbornly human.
For those who don’t know the story: on September 11th, 2001, 38 planes with nearly 7,000 passengers were diverted to Gander, Newfoundland when U.S. airspace closed. For five days, a small town of 9,000 people housed, fed, clothed, and comforted the world. Book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff & David Hein — this Tony, Olivier, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award-winning musical — turns that unlikely footnote into a masterclass in compassion.
The Welcome Is Real
From the moment you walk in, Fitzwater and his design team tell you where you are. The set — beautifully captured in Slow Burn’s tech rehearsal photos — is all warm wood, plank walls with window cutouts, scattered chairs and tables, and those gorgeous autumnal trees with red and orange leaves hanging overhead. It’s simple, as it should be. Gander isn’t Broadway spectacle. It’s a school gym, a church hall, a Tim Hortons that ran out of coffee. The time-lapse of the crew installing the foliage and log platforms shows just how much craft went into making it look effortless.
And then the music starts. If you caught Slow Burn’s sitzprobe video from October 5th, you heard it — that first choral swell when the full band (drums, violin, acoustic and electric guitar, keys, bodhran) kicks in with the cast. Live, in the Amaturo, it’s electric. Music Director Caryl Fantel keeps that famous 12-person onstage band tight and driving, and the sound is full without ever drowning these stories.
An Ensemble in Perfect Sync
Come From Away has no stars. It has 12 actors playing dozens of roles — Newfoundlanders and “come from aways” — and Slow Burn’s ensemble is the best argument I’ve seen for why this show only works when everyone is all-in.
The humor lands — and it needs to. When the Newfoundlanders teach the stranded Texans, Egyptians, British and Angelenos how to properly kiss a cod and do a screech-in, the Amaturo howled. When Ali, the Egyptian passenger facing suspicion, quietly prays center stage while the room goes still, you could hear a pin drop. That balance — never sugarcoating the uglier moments while insisting on kindness — is why this show still matters 25 years after 9/11.
Why This Production Hits Different Right Now
Slow Burn’s marketing calls it a story of “community, humanity, and kindness,” and that could sound like a greeting card. It isn’t. What Fitzwater understands — and what his cast delivers — is that kindness here is not soft. It’s logistical. It’s making 7,000 sandwiches, finding 7,000 beds, driving an empty school bus for hours to get diapers.
The opening weekend comments say it all: “I laughed! I cried! I loved every minute!” “Fantastic show, maybe the best I’ve seen in South Florida”. They’re right. I watched people around me in the curtain call photos — that ensemble bow under warm amber light with the autumn leaves overhead — wiping tears while grinning ear to ear.
Heather Simsay’s emergency swing on Saturday night as Bonnie & Others, celebrated backstage with a high-five tunnel from the entire company, is just another example of what makes Slow Burn special: it’s a company that actually practices the show’s ethos.
Verdict: Don’t Miss It
At 100 minutes with no intermission, Come From Away is tight, relentless, and ultimately healing. Slow Burn Theatre Company, sponsored this season by The Islands of The Bahamas, has given South Florida a production that honors the Broadway original while feeling completely intimate and our own.
Patrick Fitzwater’s direction keeps the heart huge and the staging humble. The band rocks. The cast sings their faces off. And you leave — as you always should with this show — believing, if only for an evening, that the world is still capable of showing up for each other.
It runs through October 25th at the Broward Center. Go. Bring tissues. Bring a friend who needs to be reminded that people can be good.
Slow Burn Theatre Company presents COME FROM AWAY — Oct 10-25, Amaturo Theater, Broward Center for the Performing Arts. Book, Music & Lyrics by Irene Sankoff & David Hein. Directed by Patrick Fitzwater. Tickets at BrowardCenter.org.
