When Once on This Island debuted at Playwright Horizons in 1990, several tropical-bird feathers were added to the caps of lyricist-bookwriter Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, whose later Ragtime is the great end-of-20th-century musical. The team had taken Rosa Guy’s novel “My Love, My Love” and transformed it into a charming stage fable about a myth told and retold on a plot of distant land that might be a short sail from Bali H’ai.
Good as it was then, it’s exponentially better now that director Michael Arden has revived the tuner at Circle in the Square. The explanation for the colorfully charismatic presentation is Arden’s deciding that this time the island isn’t as pristinely far-off as the James Michener spot that Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers imagined for South Pacific—that magical retreat from World War II. This island is sufficiently more distraught. It’s an island more nearly destroyed. It’s an island like, for instance, Puerto Rico still suffering after Hurricane Maria.
Set designer Dane Laffrey hangs the wash out to dry on the Circle in the Square auditorium walls and strews detritus on the theater’s long strip of thrust stage—with a shallow pool at one end on which an overturned rowboat lies—thereby immeasurably adding an insistent underpinning of unmistakable poverty to the often gala proceedings.
When Ahrens and Flaherty tell the story this time—the human need for storytelling is one of the most significant themes here—their vivaciously enchanting songs become that much more valuable. (The music supervisor is the always-reliable Chris Fenwick) As the numbers spring into the air they reinforce a troubled people’s indomitable spirit. Also, Camille A. Brown’s spirited choreography becomes that much more uplifting.
In Once on This Island, worried Little Girl (Emerson Davis or Mia Williamson, depending on the performance) needs cheering up. She’s told the mythical history of poor but hopeful Ti Moune (sure-to-stick-around newcomer Hailey Kilgore) and Daniel (Isaac Powell), the rich kid whose life she’s saved through her natural healing powers.
Ti Moune falls for Daniel and is convinced that when she leaves her adoptive parents Tonton Julian (Phillip Boykin with a voice to shift the clouds) and Mama Eulalie (Kenita R. Miller), Daniel will delightedly welcome her. She believes she’ll be accepted in Daniel’s well-heeled circle (they almost always wear shoes and are beautifully gowned and turbaned by designer Clint Ramos)). She’s convinced and she’ll eventually get to marry the lad.
Not so fast. This is a story of the one-percent and the other 99-percent, in which the disparate groups aren’t destined finally to mingle—not unlike today’s adversarial tax bill days. (In that regard Once on This Island isn’t so optimistic.) So the outcome for which spectators may be wishing isn’t guaranteed.
The eventual resolution, despite—or perhaps because of—Ti Moune’s being watched over by three favorable gods (Lea Salonga, Quentin Earl Darrington, Alex Newell) and one not so favorable (Merle Dandridge) is another twist of enchantment caliber.
From start to finish Arden and Brown punctuate Ti Moune’s lush saga with kaleidoscopic routines at the ends of which excited audience members give up deserved applause. Were I forced to pick a favorite turn, I’d point to “Mama Will Provide,” which Newell—circulating grandly in what looks like 100 yards of a floral-patterned skirt—delivers as if she owned not only this island but the island of Manhattan as well. (Flaherty provided the original vocal arrangements, Annmarie Milazzo and Michael Starobin the orchestrations).
If I have any reservation about this materialization of Once on This Island, it’s in regard to director Arden. His last Broadway credit is the 2015 Spring Awakening revival, and he’s also helmed a Los Angeles Merrily We Roll Along. With this triumph, he’s going to be in demand.
Which possibly means an end or near-end to his singing- acting career. This is somewhat unfortunate, because he has one of the most beautiful voices we have today. But don’t take my word for it. Go to YouTube and call up his version of “Run Away With Me,” the outstanding Kait Kerrigan-Brian Lowdermilk ballad now being heard across towns at 59E59 Theatres in The Mad Ones.
The name Arden is, of course, nearly “ardent,” another word significantly applicable to his transcendent and shockingly relevant-to-today Once on This Island.