Once on this Island

Postcard Review by Caroline Russell-King

Show – Once on this Island

Playwright/s/Composer/s – Music and book by Lynn Ahrens music by Stephen Flaherty based on the book My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy.

Production Company/Theatre space – StoryBook Theatre at The Beddington Arts Centre

Length – 2 Act, 135 minutes (one intermission)

Genre/s – Musical Tragedy

Premise – When a young indigenous islander finds an injured fair skinned French colonizer she nurses him back to health, falls in love, goes to his gated community, sleeps with him, dances for others, finds out he has a fiancé, and (spoiler) dies of despair outside the city gates turning into a tree to shade his future family.

Why this play? Why now? – The show has a large BIPOC cast, which is greatan  but teaches kids:

1.     Girls should sacrifice their health at the expense of a man, refusing food and sleep to take care of him.

2.     Gods claim to be all powerful but cannot intervene to help believers in peril.

3.     A god can encourage a girl to murder for revenge relieving her of her autonomy.

4.     When a man who deceives and lies to a woman by omission, she can still want to marry him, have his children, and live happily in a house with a tree.

5.     Fiancés who find out their soon-to-be husband has taken a lover, should still go through with the marriage.

6.     Dying alone without a man, in despair, lying on dirt, not eating or sleeping is more noble than getting on with life.

7.     A family can take comfort that their dead decomposing daughter fertilizes to a tree and hasn’t died in vain because the tree weakens a wall. This symbolizes a unity of cultures.

Curiosities – Why does the former younger self go to herself as she dies and then happily sandwiches herself between her grieving parents? Is this a past memory in a present moment? Wouldn’t it have been great to see the theatrical transformation from human to tree? As my companion inquired, was this based on the Greek myth of Appollo and Daphne?

Notable Moment – A pretend god gives a real weapon to a mortal to slaughter her beloved.

Notable writing – This won an Olivier and Tony nominations for Best Musical, Book and Score.

Notable performances – Leading a cast of 26, the very talented Abiola Famakinwa is riveting.  The chemistry between her and charismatic lover Joshua Jack Matabio crackles.

Notable design/Production – Natalia Cortez, mentored by JP Thibodeau, has created a dynamic set design. Thibodeau also gives a master class on lighting design.

Notable direction – Janelle Cooper’s stage direction is sometimes confusing.  

One reason to see this show – Famakinwa (and all the joy on the young faces in the show).