Review of the musical / blog 36

“The musical Once On This Island is based on the novel My Love, My Love, or the Peasant Girl by Rosa Guy, a Caribbean retelling of the folk tale “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen”(Director’s Note). This musical was directed by Ms. Guarnio, and was presented on this weekend by the fantastic performers.

On this island, people were separated by their social classes—peasants and the rich people. They were like two different worlds that never met each other. The protagonist of this musical is a peasant girl called Ti Moune, who was favored by the gods that were in the island’s tale. Ti Moune was found and raised up by an old peasant couple in the tree when she was little; she always wanted to have a better life as a peasant, so the god created an accident and let her met the rich family’s son—Daniel. Ti Moune decided to save his life even if it was against the wish of everyone else around her, and once Daniel woke up, he was impressed by Ti Moune’s beauty and they fell in love with each other. Unfortunately, even if they love each other, they could not marry each other because of the different social class they were in. Ti Moune died after two weeks of waiting outside the gate of the rich’s house and Daniel’s wedding with another descendant of the rich. She became a tree standing outside the house of the rich after her death, watching Daniel’s family’s life.

The story was pretty sad, where Ti Moune loved Daniel but Daniel did not love her as much. The actors had really put themselves into the characters, and showed the characteristics and personalities of their characters. Since it is a musical, they need to exaggerate their body language and facial languages to enforce the emotions and feelings, and to make the audiences understand what is happening easier. It is clearly to see that the troupe had put in great efforts on the settings and the props; the background of the stage was painted really well, with the comparison between the rich and poor part of the island very clear. The four stairs for the four gods were set up nicely for the audiences to recognize easier. And even the clothing of the peasants and rich were obviously differentiated; the rich were wearing all white, while the poor peasants were wearing colorfully.

Fairy tales usually have a good ending of people marrying and having a happy-ever-after life, but in this case, I don’t think that Ti Moune would be happy if she married Daniel. According to the performance of the musical, Daniel is a coward that lacks ability and responsibility to marry Ti Moune. He could not deny the request from his parents for him to marry his rich fiancé, and he didn’t even try to do so. When he knew that it is impossible for him to marry Ti Moune, he immediately abandoned her and thrown her out of his house. If he really loves Timoune, he should be feeling thankful and be responsible for her life, but he wasn’t. I think he doesn’t worth Ti Moune’s love and life, because he was just playing with her love but did not want to do anything for her.