The hit Caribbean-set musical “Once on This Island” is sweeping through OKC’s Lyric Theatre like a swirling ocean storm, and just in time for the real hurricane season, too.
Running right now through Sunday, October 6th, this remarkably simple – yet culturally and conceptually robust – story concerns a little girl with big dreams, a lost, injured noble boy, and a tale of two colliding worlds forced to confront one another.
And if that all sounds pretty familiar, it’s no accident.
The musical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty is based on Trinidadian novelist Rosa Gay’s “My Love, My Love: or The Peasant Girl,” which was itself intended as a Caribbean retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s timeless “The Little Mermaid.”
But you shouldn’t be expecting Disney here. “Once on This Island” functions like an actual cultural folktale, concerned more with sacrifice, commitment, and cautionary warnings of hubris and the whims of the gods.
But mostly, it’s concerned with family, music, dancing, and the rich, deeply hewn culture that the story exists to celebrate.
When a girl is orphaned by a massive tropical storm off the island’s coast, a childless couple adopts her, teaching her all about the gods that oversee life on the island, gods of the land, of the waters, of love, and death.
The girl grows, confused as to her destiny and why her life was spared from the storm until one night, when another storm causes the crash of a rich, high-born noble boy from the other side of the island, a whole other world as far as the poor peasants are concerned.
The girl, Ti Moune, vows that it will be her purpose to save the boy’s life, and she feels the pull of love and romance drawing her to him, even as he lies unconscious and nearly dead.
All of this, of course, is being directly manipulated by the gods, who may be simply testing Ti Moune’s resolve and the strength of her own stubborn will.
Again, there are shades of any number of well-worn worldwide folk stories, but what sets this particular telling apart is the communal and familial framing device that sees the entire ensemble gathering and partying before sitting down to spin the tale for another young girl for the first time.
In that way, every member of the ensemble takes their turns handling the narration, acting as props, moving the sets, jumping in and out of the electrifying choreography, and each portraying their own character in the story within the story.
It’s a revelatory device, granting every person on stage the freedom to move, express, emote, and participate even when there are no lines, and ensuring that no one is simply an unnamed ensemble performer, instead granting every actor a dual role and a lynchpin of their own in the storytelling.
It feels so believably like one big family or a tight-knit community gathering to initiate their youngest member through the telling of this eternal and integral story, and the result is a palpable and charged energy radiating from the stage to the back row.
Unsurprisingly, that energy continues coursing throughout every moment of the show through the music, through the rhythms of that Creole and Caribbean sound, pulsing and bumping and practically daring the audience not to dance in their seats.
Other acclaimed, award-winning productions of the show have gone to unprecedented lengths to bring the audience into the action, including covering the stage in real beach sand, employing real animals around the set, and even seating much of the audience directly on stage to interact.
But it’s a testament to director Monique Midgette and her loose, refreshingly natural cast that none of those elements are needed here. The audience is made to feel like a part of the island community simply through the glances and side-eyes and comfort from the storytellers on stage, and through the ever-welcoming music and infectious communal atmosphere and good nature that the ensemble makes seem effortless.
Special mention obviously must go to Kalen Robinson in the lead role of the adult Ti Moune. Robinson not only ably sells the emotional range of the heroine, but at multiple moments in the show, she brings the house down and the audience to applause purely through the power and laser-focused sustain of her high notes.
I also have to spotlight Lyric veteran Mariah Warren in the role of Papa Ge, the “sly demon of death” who serves as the story’s antagonist.
Warren utilizes her entire body so fully and fluidly in the role and demonstrates such control over her face and expressions to elevate her god of death to perhaps the most joyfully and compellingly watchable figure on stage. She even imbues a bit of that same rebelliousness and individuality into her own “storyteller” in the ensemble, driving home that element of personality and character that each storyteller brings to their contributions to the tale.
“Once on This Island” is many things, then. It’s enough of a magical, visually spectacular fairy tale to entice even young, uninitiated musical audiences. But it’s the adult viewers – in particular the parents and even grandparents – that will be most moved by and connected to the feelings of family and community that permeate every moment.
And of course, there’s not one person that can deny the appeal of the music and dance.
That’s really what it’s all about.
Lyric Theatre’s production of “Once on This Island” runs at Lyric’s Plaza District theatre now through Sunday, October 6th.
For showtimes, ticklets, and more information, visit lyrictheatreokc.org.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
