once on this island (2018)
Full transparency: I found a bootleg of this production on Google and rewatched it in September. I still wrote this from memory, as most of the visual of the bootleg is the back of a tall guy’s head. I may or may not still have the bootleg on my Google Drive, but I will not share it with anyone because that’s illegal (wink wink dm me wink wink). I will, however, stubbornly continue watching bootlegs of productions that I like because what else is there? If Broadway cares, they can release the tapes! Keep me from watching Broadway shows illegally by giving me professional footage on a streaming service, please!
What is it?
Adapted from the book My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy (don’t buy books on Amazon please), Once On This Island commences with a storm shaking a small village on a tropical island rife with class divisions based on racism and classism. When the storm causes a small child to start crying, the villagers come together to tell her the story of Ti Moune, a peasant girl who falls in love with a “grand homme” named Daniel, a light-skinned man from the wealthy side of the island. The gods of the island make a wager over Ti Moune’s life and send her on a journey to find her love. Ti Moune ultimately trades her life for Daniel’s, proving that love can conquer death. The gods transform her body into a tree that destroys the gate separating the grand hommes from the peasants and the villagers dance as the storm is, presumably, over.
Where?
Circle in the Square Theatre, Broadway
When?
December, 2018
With whom?
I was supposed to take an *evil male* visiting from abroad, but he forgot to renew his passport in time (???) so I sold my tickets to friends and met him in Copenhagen, where he laughed for several minutes after I tripped and fell into a puddle in my brand new wool coat and pair of Sezane tights in 40-degree weather. When I got home, I bought a new set of tickets for me and my mom.
What do you remember best?
I remember crying basically from lights down/first chord, the live goats and chickens in the pre-show barbecue, sand on the stage, barefoot actors, wishing it was summer and not winter, and the happiest cast of performers I’ve ever seen.
Talk about it, please.
This revival of Once on this Island was directed by Michael Arden, who I actually only know from my high school passion of ~contemporary musical theatre of the 2000s~ (see: Kerrigan and Lowdermilk and Adam Gwon or anyone who hired Krysta Rodriguez to perform their songs at Joe’s Pub or 54 Below before 2012). The revival featured Hailey Kilgore as Ti Moune (I saw her understudy, also great), Alex Newell as Asaka, goddess of the Earth, Lea Salonga as Erzulie, the goddess of love, and my personal favorite queen from SIX, Anna Uzele, in its ensemble. The revival was critically well-received for its talented cast as well as its charming DIY sensibility (the gods assumed their regal finery slowly and piece by piece; Alex Newell started the show as a peasant storyteller in a red sports jersey then grabbed a tablecloth, wrapped it around his waist as a full skirt and by the next time he was on stage, he had hilariously paired an ornate floral headpiece with his mismatched garb and fully became Asaka in all her earthy magnificence).
The great trick of this production is its framing: the story is initiated for the benefit of a child, and its seams are, at first, appropriately apparent. In “One Small Girl,” the show’s second song after its opener, the storytellers make the sounds and movements of wind to represent a storm in a way that only a kid would buy, then the lights turn blue and a more realistic soundscape plays. This ragtag juxtaposition reminds us that our experience is filtered through that of the child, for the reality of the situation is that a group of adults is playing pretend in the sand, decorating themselves in trash, and standing on barrels to mimic the sound of the wind and rain. Through the eyes of the child, however, the story being told is injected with her imagination and wonder and looks a lot more like what we, the audience, witness (changes in lights, actual rain, the real sounds of thunder and lightning in the space). This is a theatrical game I love – when reality depicted onstage is warped to fit a certain perspective, in this case, that of a child both hearing and imagining a story. This experience mirrors our own when we attend the theatre: we know, at the end of the day, that the people on stage are actors and that none of what we see is really happening. The emotional journey ends when the curtains close, so to speak, and then Macbeth has to go home and do his laundry. When we watch a story unfold on stage, though, the *magic* that ensues is a collaboration between the spectacle and our imaginations. This show, in particular, did an excellent job portraying the imaginative work of an audience – we see what the child visualizes, but, as the audience of this production, our experience is made even bigger as our own brains kick in to do the usual creative work required of us (imagining “fourth walls,” etc.) What a wonderful gift Michael Arden’s direction was to me, a lunatic who thinks like this.
The walls of the theater were bedecked in clotheslines hung with used garments, which former Vulture reviewer Sara Holdren noted evoked survivors, inhabitants of places constantly under threat of natural disasters capable of threatening their homes and lives. The decorative reminder of this reality might seem incongruous with the joy depicted onstage (please watch Alex Newell perform “Mama Will Provide” in this POS video to feel the palpable pleasure of storytelling and also a truly insane voice) but that’s precisely the point: stories sustain us, they keep us alive in/help us make sense of a terrifying world. Think about the things that made life in the pandemic bearable: specifically, I May Destroy You, the new seasons of Search Party and Pen15, season five of America’s Next Top Model, all of the Thanksgiving episodes of Friends that you watched with your mom in the order of how an email she received ranked their quality, and no, these examples are not specific to me. We build our lives around stories: the mythical epics of how our grandparents suffered for us to live the way we do, romantic comedies that first showed us what love looks like, or the dreams we interpret with our therapists.
The story told in Once On This Island is one of star-crossed lovers (the Capulets and Montagues are reorganized into “two different worlds,” that of the rich, white or light-skinned grand hommes who surround the Hotel Beauxhomme, and that of the peasants) in which all involved learn that love can conquer death through Ti Moune’s sacrifice. This might not seem overtly relevant to the emotional strife caused by colonization or living under the constant menace of destruction or natural disaster, but the villagers’ choice to tell a love story feels purposeful to me. Stories direct our focus, and when life is difficult or seems not to offer a bounty of reasons to get out of bed, the most compelling tale to tell might not be a reminder of existential struggle, but of the beautiful things that fill the corners of our days, before and after work, on weekends, over socially-distant picnics, in brief text messages, like love.
Much has been written about the performances in this production, and I don’t have a lot to add other than they were perfect, invigorating, emotional, strong, fun, and made me also want to dance around in jean shorts. Everyone other than Lea Salonga was a standout. Lea Salonga was fine.
I wanted to talk about Once On This Island first because its subject matter feels relevant to now, which is easily the scariest historical moment I’ve lived through. The pandemic has annihilated my favorite thing in the world (theatre in New York), and I’ve felt the absence of other people more than I expected to: though a self-proclaimed introvert (I know, it’s gross to say out loud, shut up) who loves to be alone in her room taking a nap at 7pm, I now willingly and several times a week Facetime both of my parents separately within minutes of each other to get a hit of dopamine, and I make my boyfriend spend a lot of time with me. I’ve lately found myself filling empty hours with books, movies, any story, sad or happy, as long as it’s not about the world ending (apart from a rewatch of The Leftovers, which is a TV show about love that pretends to be a show about the world ending). When I saw Once On This Island live, I was heartbroken and needed a story to make me feel grateful for having loved at all. Now I’m heartbroken in a different, nonromantic, mid-pandemic kind of way, but I’ve got a newfound appreciation for the stories that don’t ignore, but rather turn my focus from what’s wrong (quarantine, capitalism, racism, a lack of funding for the arts) so that I remember what’s right (the wonderful people whom I love and who love me, being able to Facetime them from my magic computer).
These are the impressions that I’m left with from a show that I saw live over two years ago. I’ll continue fiddling with this method of belated reviews, but in the meantime, thank you for reading! I spent a lot of time staring at my wall trying to recall specifically why I enjoyed this production so much. Comment below if you remember something that I don’t!
Once On This Island was directed by Michael Arden and ran on Broadway from 2017 to 2018. Its book was written by Lynn Ahrens with music by Stephen Flaherty.
Photo: Sara Krulwich