By Christopher Bradford
Once on This Island has been performed numerous times in the past few years in both Salt Lake and Utah valleys, but somehow I had never seen it until Friday night’s performance at the Grand Theatre at Salt Lake Community College. The Grand is a stately theater that was once part of South High and has been refurbished as part of SLCC.
As my wife Luc, and I entered the theater, we were greeted by jungle sounds and the sight of the entire set with tree trunks sparsely populated with large leaves. We noted that the grand curtain is set quite far back from the front of the stage, which probably contributed to decisions made about the staging of the play. We were surprised to see that the audience Friday night filled less than a quarter of this handsome theater’s main floor.
The play opens with a great storm on an island in the French Antilles peopled by native islanders, called peasants, and the French rulers, called grandes hommes. One of the peasant girls (6th-grader Malia Nixon) is frightened by the storm, and her villagers try to calm her fears by telling her the story of Ti Moune, a peasant girl who loved a grande homme named Daniel. The play is characterized as a retelling of the original tale of the Little Mermaid and relates the tragic impossibility of love between a peasant and a grande homme. When Ti Moune dies of her love for Daniel when he weds another, the island gods are so moved that they transform her into a tree that cracks the gates separating the peasants from the grande hommes, allowing the two societies to mingle.
The entire 90-minute play is presented without pause; there are no scene changes and no intermission. The curtain never closes and the set never changes. Rather, the set is transformed in the minds of the storytelling villagers and their audience to represent settings as varied as the seashore, the hotel where the grandes hommes live, and the demesne of the island gods of earth, water, love, and death. We felt that this decision made the show flow very smoothly and maintained the feel of storytelling throughout.
After a few balance issues with the microphones in the opening minutes of the show, the cast of 13 had an excellent vocal blend. We noted in the program that several of the cast members are regular performers at the Grand and had recently performed in other shows together. This seems to have created a rapport that was evident throughout the play.
In my view, while all the cast had good voices, the standout voices were Ali Bennet in the role of Erzulie, goddess of love, and JD Dumas in the role of Agwe, god of water. They had excellent tone, though I wished for more power from Dumas as he seemed to hold back quite a bit during his solo planning the meeting of Daniel and Ti Moune. Similarly, Lucy and I looked for more energy from the cast at times. Perhaps this was due to the relatively small size of the cast in a proscenium theater. I thought Sean J. Carter in the role of Papa Ge, god of death, was the standout actor, switching impressively between the role of a villager and the crafty Papa Ge.
Steven Shoemaker in his theatrical debut as Daniel did best vocally in “Forever Yours,” a group number duetting with Erica Nicole Walter in the role of Ti Moune. His solo, “Some Girls,” wasn’t as confident and we noticed a few pitch issues. Generally speaking, the few pitch issues we noticed among the cast were corrected quickly and did not seriously detract from the very enjoyable music of the show.
Several members of the cast, including Walter (Ti Moune), Angela Trusty (Mama), and James Titus (Tonton) affected island accents, while most of the rest of the cast didn’t. I would have appreciated more consistency throughout the cast in the choice whether to use an accent or not. James Titus did a good job switching between a village storyteller and Tonton, Ti Moune’s adopted father, but I wondered whether an older actor would have fit the part of the aging parent better. Despite this, both Titus and Trusty had strong performances.
The lighting was excellent and added greatly to the show. This was particularly noticeable in the opening storm scene, with lightning flashes, but contributed to the mood of each scene very well.
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Erica Nicole Walter as Ti Moune did an excellent job portraying her relationship as an orphaned girl adopted by “foster” parents Tonton and Mama, as well as the love-struck girl determined to seek out her Daniel. Her performance emphasized her love for Daniel, consistent with the message of the show’s ending, but we would have liked to see more conflict as she finds herself betrayed by Daniel and his father (Douglas Irey) when Daniel weds Andrea (Natale McAneney), and most especially when she holds a knife over him, but decides not to kill him for his betrayal. This seemed too abrupt and almost anti-climactic. The ending of the show felt similarly short and consequently a bit strained, though this may be more due to the writing of the show than this performance.
This impression of abruptness in the ending stayed with us as we drove home, but as we discussed the show, we had mostly very positive impressions. This performance certainly deserves a better audience showing than we saw Friday night. We would encourage you to go see Once on This Island at the Grand Theatre.
Once on This Island
Book and Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, Music by Stephen Flaherty
Thursdays through Saturdays March 6-22, 7:30 PM plus Saturday matinees at 2 PM
The Grand Theatre at Salt Lake Community College, 1575 South State Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84115
801-957-3322
http://the-grand.org/events/current-season/once-on-this-island
Tickets $10-$24
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