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Once on This Island: Vocal Selections
(Vocal Selections). With full-color photos from the production. Includes: We Dance * Waiting for Life * Rain * Forever Yours * Ti Moune * Mama Will Provide * Some Girls.
68 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1990
3 people are currently reading
15 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Flaherty
69 books1 followerStephen Flaherty has enjoyed a musical partnership with lyricist/bookwriter Lynn Ahrens since 1983. They are considered the foremost theatrical songwriting team of their generation.
For Broadway’s Ragtime they won the Tony Award, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. They wrote the song score for Twentieth Century Fox’s animated feature film Anastasia, earning two Academy Award nominations and two Golden Globe nominations, and also adapted Anastasia theatrically for Broadway and internationally. Their many additional stage credits include Broadway’s Once On This Island (2018 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical; Tony nominations for Best Score and Book); Seussical (one of the most produced shows in America; Drama Desk nomination for Music); Rocky; Ragtime (Broadway premiere and 2009 revival); Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life; Lincoln Center Theater’s My Favorite Year, A Man of No Importance (Best Off-Broadway Musical, Outer Critics Circle), Dessa Rose and The Glorious Ones (Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Music for the latter three); Lucky Stiff; and two upcoming musicals, Knoxville and Marie. Their mutual honors include the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement, London’s Olivier Award and four Grammy nominations. In 2015 they were inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. Ahrens and Flaherty are Council members of the Dramatists Guild of America and proud co-founders of the DGF Fellows Program for Emerging Writers.
Individually, Mr. Flaherty composed the score for the dance musical In Your Arms (Old Globe), the musical Loving Repeating (Jefferson Award, Best New Musical) and incidental music for Neil Simon's Proposals (Broadway.) Film credits include Lucky Stiff, After The Storm and others. His concert music has premiered at the Hollywood Bowl, Boston's Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Guggenheim.
For Broadway’s Ragtime they won the Tony Award, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. They wrote the song score for Twentieth Century Fox’s animated feature film Anastasia, earning two Academy Award nominations and two Golden Globe nominations, and also adapted Anastasia theatrically for Broadway and internationally. Their many additional stage credits include Broadway’s Once On This Island (2018 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical; Tony nominations for Best Score and Book); Seussical (one of the most produced shows in America; Drama Desk nomination for Music); Rocky; Ragtime (Broadway premiere and 2009 revival); Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life; Lincoln Center Theater’s My Favorite Year, A Man of No Importance (Best Off-Broadway Musical, Outer Critics Circle), Dessa Rose and The Glorious Ones (Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Music for the latter three); Lucky Stiff; and two upcoming musicals, Knoxville and Marie. Their mutual honors include the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement, London’s Olivier Award and four Grammy nominations. In 2015 they were inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. Ahrens and Flaherty are Council members of the Dramatists Guild of America and proud co-founders of the DGF Fellows Program for Emerging Writers.
Individually, Mr. Flaherty composed the score for the dance musical In Your Arms (Old Globe), the musical Loving Repeating (Jefferson Award, Best New Musical) and incidental music for Neil Simon's Proposals (Broadway.) Film credits include Lucky Stiff, After The Storm and others. His concert music has premiered at the Hollywood Bowl, Boston's Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Guggenheim.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 18, 2022
I worked on a production of Once on This Island in college. With the principal characters played by white actors. I was surprised to find that the script includes alternate lines to remove most of the overt references of race from its text. But, they're impossible to remove entirely. Even if you just call them peasants, anyone casually familiar with history knows who was working the plantations of French colonies in the Caribbean. So, the production was well sung and choreographed but ultimately still extremely uncomfortable and the college really oughtn't have allowed that casting and, honestly, the script should probably not even have the suggested changes to remove references to skin color.
For the text itself? It's beautiful. The music is wonderful and the poetry of the lyrics is enchanting. And 'enchanting' is an especially good thing for the piece to aspire to because it's rather a fairy tale. Specifically, it's a sort of loose adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. But unlike Disney's more direct adaptation of the idea, Once on This Island has some teeth (But, of course, not too much teeth).
Rather than a divide between mythical mer-people and humanity, the conflict is restyled as between the dark-skinned peasants, descendants of the enslaved, who live in abject poverty and the lighter-skinned grands hommes, the bourgeoise class who are descended from French settlers. The peasants are depicted as largely content with their lot in life and keep their distance from the wealthy cities. Then Ti Moune comes along and wishes for more, which the gods grant by making a wealthy grand homme boy crash his car. It's complicated. The introduction of themes of class and colonialism give it a welcome bit of edge, though not in-depth, the text is skittish about actually engaging with that. The script never really much analyzes the politics and certainly doesn't want to interrogate the extreme inequality of its setting. Part of this is probably because Broadway never rocks the boat too hard but it seems inconceivable that the writers didn't at least think about that when the rebellion against and deposing of Haitian dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier was still in recent memory when this show was being written. The Duvaliers certainly fit the bill for the play's Grands Hommes. The play treads on it when the wealthy lead's family forbids him to marry the peasant girl who saved his life but never really interrogates this system by which wealth is continually concentrated in the hands of the few at the expense of everyone else. But it's okay. His son will end up marrying a peasant girl, probably.
There's a lot of promise in the script and if it were not intended for Broadway and were in the hands of a more daring team, it could have been a scathing indictment of the vestiges of Colonialism and the suffering they still cause even hundreds of years later. But it's not really trying to be that, that's mostly just a backdrop to a bittersweet love story. And being a fairy tale I kind of get it. There's a lot going on what-with gods and all but it seems like a massive missed opportunity to appropriate such a setting and then shy away from tougher material. Ultimately, the island setting is largely here to add color.
The plot moves quickly with songs weaving seamlessly and the show flows like an ocean current. Any blackout or such interrupting transition would ruin the amazing way the script moves. It is a thing of beauty how dialog emerges from song and subsumes back into music for its run time. You can't get bored because Once of This Island won't let you. So, I find a lot of the content lacking and wish the script were smarter but if you don't think too hard about it, you'll enjoy it.
For the text itself? It's beautiful. The music is wonderful and the poetry of the lyrics is enchanting. And 'enchanting' is an especially good thing for the piece to aspire to because it's rather a fairy tale. Specifically, it's a sort of loose adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. But unlike Disney's more direct adaptation of the idea, Once on This Island has some teeth (But, of course, not too much teeth).
Rather than a divide between mythical mer-people and humanity, the conflict is restyled as between the dark-skinned peasants, descendants of the enslaved, who live in abject poverty and the lighter-skinned grands hommes, the bourgeoise class who are descended from French settlers. The peasants are depicted as largely content with their lot in life and keep their distance from the wealthy cities. Then Ti Moune comes along and wishes for more, which the gods grant by making a wealthy grand homme boy crash his car. It's complicated. The introduction of themes of class and colonialism give it a welcome bit of edge, though not in-depth, the text is skittish about actually engaging with that. The script never really much analyzes the politics and certainly doesn't want to interrogate the extreme inequality of its setting. Part of this is probably because Broadway never rocks the boat too hard but it seems inconceivable that the writers didn't at least think about that when the rebellion against and deposing of Haitian dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier was still in recent memory when this show was being written. The Duvaliers certainly fit the bill for the play's Grands Hommes. The play treads on it when the wealthy lead's family forbids him to marry the peasant girl who saved his life but never really interrogates this system by which wealth is continually concentrated in the hands of the few at the expense of everyone else. But it's okay. His son will end up marrying a peasant girl, probably.
There's a lot of promise in the script and if it were not intended for Broadway and were in the hands of a more daring team, it could have been a scathing indictment of the vestiges of Colonialism and the suffering they still cause even hundreds of years later. But it's not really trying to be that, that's mostly just a backdrop to a bittersweet love story. And being a fairy tale I kind of get it. There's a lot going on what-with gods and all but it seems like a massive missed opportunity to appropriate such a setting and then shy away from tougher material. Ultimately, the island setting is largely here to add color.
The plot moves quickly with songs weaving seamlessly and the show flows like an ocean current. Any blackout or such interrupting transition would ruin the amazing way the script moves. It is a thing of beauty how dialog emerges from song and subsumes back into music for its run time. You can't get bored because Once of This Island won't let you. So, I find a lot of the content lacking and wish the script were smarter but if you don't think too hard about it, you'll enjoy it.
February 6, 2020
Gorgeous music and energy. Saw the tour and am blown away by the choreography. I wish the heart of the story wasn’t a woman sacrificing herself for a man. I would love to turn that element upside-down somehow.
December 28, 2022
I love that this is set in the Caribbean. I hate the trope of women sacrificing everything to save a guy who then turns on her. Honestly after all these classical tales, a hatred for men is almost natural. At the same time, the main character was so unreasonable and irrational (throwing away everything she had in life with really no good reason at all, not even context to justify it) made it really hard to sympathize with her side. The dude was just reasonable.
August 14, 2014
I was in the musical as Mama Euralie and the music was phenomenal!
December 22, 2018
Despite my love for this story and my understanding of how much work was placed in making it this great-I still believe that there was work needed to do on not blatantly mistranslating Haitian Creole or using french incorrectly.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews