"Once on This Island"

Theatre review
"Once on This Island" at the Hangar Theatre
Ithaca Times
June 24, 2009
746 words
"Crossed Lovers"

full text here

Crossed Lovers

Mark Tedeschi

"Once on This Island," book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, music by Stephen Flaherty. Directed by Jesse Bush. Starring Lauren Davis, Jamal Lee Harris, Brianna Horne, James Jackson, Jr., Isaiah Johnson, Joaquina Kalukango, Jewell Payne, Frank Viveros, Jacque Tara Washington, Raena White, Darryl Jovan Williams. With scenic and lighting designer Steve TenEyck, costume designer Kenann Quander, sound designer Don Tindall, musical director J. Oconer Navarro, and choreographer Cjay Philip.

Packing over 20 attention-grabbing musical numbers in under two hours, Once on This Island, the Hangar Theatre's second mainstage production of the summer, will have you humming long after you've left the theatre.

Set in the French Antilles, Once on This Island is based on Rosa Guy's 1985 novel "My Love, My Love," itself a Caribbean reworking of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid." The plot, told here as a story within a story, deals with the socio-racial complications of a pair of star-cross'd lovers, Ti Moune (Joaquina Kalukango) and Daniel (Jamal Lee Harris). At the Hangar, Jesse Bush directs, spotlighting the best elements and carrying the show with engaging kinetics.

Don Tindall's sound design kicks the show into gear with a noisy thunderstorm that shakes up a peasant village, particularly one young girl (Jewell Payne) whom the villagers rush to comfort with the escapist warmth of a good story. The storytellers act as the characters in their tale; in "We Dance," they introduce the setting, similar to their own, that's ruled by four "powerful, temperamental gods": Asaka, Mother of the Earth (Raena White); Agawé, God of Water (Frank Viveros); Erzulie, Goddess of Love (Brianna Horne); and Papa Ge, Demon of Death (Isaiah Johnson). At first, it's a little tough to parse the cast's faithfully thick Caribbean accents, but the dialect becomes transparent once they roll through the unfamiliar names.

Following a torrential flood, Mama (Jacque Tara Washington) and Tonton (James Jackson, Jr.) discover an orphaned child, spared by the gods, crying in a tree. The ebullient girl is also played by Payne, a student at Ithaca's Boyton Middle School who handily tackles Cjay Philip's vibrant choreography. Mama and Tonton adopt the girl, name her Ti Moune, and poof! She grows up ("One Small Girl").

During "Rain," Daniel - a lighter-skinned young man of the wealthy, French-descended Beauxhomme family - loses control of his car and suffers a nasty crash. Ti Moune discovers him and, through protests from everyone in her family, brings him back to the village, caring for him and praying to the gods. But when Tonton treks to the Beauxhomme mansion to report their discovery, they promptly retrieve Daniel, despite Ti Moune's insistence that her love is the only thing keeping him alive. In "Forever Yours," she offers Papa Ge her own life in place of Daniel's. Papa Ge accepts, knowing that he will return eventually.

In the second act, Ti Moune finds the Hotel Beauxhomme and steals into Daniel's bedroom. After he awakes and realizes who she is, they admit their love for each other, ignoring the cultural distance between them. In "Some Girls," the only full-length, single-performer number in the show, Harris as Daniel belts an earnest solo praising Ti Moune for her unaffected perspective on life. Later, though, the divide proves sturdier than Ti Moune anticipated; Daniel's father Armand (Darryl Jovan Williams) tells him in "Pray (Reprise)," "You are my son / You'll do what must be done / No matter how you feel."

Kalukango proves herself a skilled leading lady, working through Ti Moune's deceptively acrobatic vocal parts in songs like "Waiting for Life" and stopping the show in its tracks during "Ti Moune's Dance" at the ball. In the latter number, Johnson accompanies her on a conga over the orchestra's euphonious, percussive Afro-Caribbean beats. As Papa Ge, Johnson gives his performance a laudable blend of snide causticism and demonic duty.

Kenann Quander's costumes fit the milieu: worn-and-torn garments for the peasants and more regal wear for the Grandes Hommes. Both allow ample movement, since the many musical interludes and crafty staging demands it.

Stephen TenEyck, lighting and scenic designer, endows the stage with a few crucial elements for a poverty-stricken village. Some crates and faded shack doorways fill one side of the stage, but standing out across the background and at the show's thematic root is a large two-dimensional tree, monochrome until the light points at it just right. Thatchy steps lead up to its branches, allowing Ti Moune to bound up and down at will.

That tree, where Ti Moune was first discovered, signifies the villagers' kinship with the Earth and their relationship with the gods. They knew they would learn from Ti Moune, and her unshakable belief in love as a power transcendent of all others is why they continue to tell her story. Guiltless optimism in the face of misfortune, amplified in the Hangar's production, is precisely what makes Once on This Island so enjoyable.


Ti Moune (Joaquina Kalukango) in the Hangar Theatre’s production of “Once On This Island.” (Photo by Thomas Hoebbel Photography)
Members of the cast of ‘MASS,’ at Cornell’s Schwartz Center. (Photo provided)