Caribbean fairy tale ‘Once on This Island’ is short, sweet – Tallahassee.com

Clockwise from top: Agwe (Vincent Montgomery), Papa Ge (Vonzel DeShawn Reynolds), Ti Moune (Ashley Bruce, bottom), Erzulie (Akeisha Mandela), and Asaka (Alexis Johnson) are players in "Once on This Island"'s talented ensemble cast.(Photo: Quincy Music Theatre)

When telling the story of a people, one must be earnest to those the story reflects. Its why some bemoan Miss Saigon for its Eurocentrism while others laud Moana for attempting to see Pacific Islanders through their own eyes. Like that sentimental fairy tale about island folk, another does the same for Caribbean lore in Once on This Island, the charming one-act musical opening this weekend at the Leaf Theater in Quincy.

Set in the French Antilles, its The Little Mermaid meets Romeo & Juliet, framed as a story-within-a-story. During a frightening thunderstorm, peasant villagers comfort a small girl by telling her about another girl who as an infant was orphaned by a storm not unlike that nights. This girl, Ti Moune (played as a child by Alaina Mohammad and as an adult by Ashley Bruce), is found and adopted by a peasant couple, Mama Euralie (Monica Howell) and Tonton Julian (Tory Williams).

The island is governed by four gods: Agwe, God of Water (Vincent Montgomery), Asaka, Mother of the Earth (Alexis Johnson), Erzulie, Goddess of Love (Akeisha Mandela), and the Demon of Death, Papa Ge (Vonzel DeShawn Reynolds). One day, a fully-grown Ti Moune prays to the gods that she might find her purpose, prompting a bet between Papa Ge and Erzulie about which is stronger: love or death.

The gods test their bet by causing the car of a young aristocrat named Daniel Beauxhomme (Timothy Haney) to crash nearby so that Ti Moune may find and heal him. She does, and while restoring him to health falls in love with him. The only problem is that Daniel is a grand hommes, light-skinned descendants of the French who occupy the wealthy and developed half of the island. Such is the caste segregating him from Ti Moune, the dark-skinned peasant who he too comes to desire. The classic Montague and Capulet scenario.

Tonton learns from a visit to Daniels family about why the two groups remain separated, in an oral history lesson about how a French colonist named Armand (Aris Averkieu) had a mixed-race son named Beauxhomme who led the peasantry in repelling the French, only to come to hate them when the affluent Beauxhommes displaced the colonists as the dominant social class.

Heartbreak enters the equation when a dejected Ti Moune learns of Daniels arranged marriage to the well-heeled beauty Andrea (Naomi Lamarche) and shes forced to make a desperate choice. The musical ends much as it beginsto the sound of an upbeat island groove, one that is both familiar and distant.

Much of the plot is sung-through, and so its the music itself that tells the story. The scenery, a garden of live tropical plants assembled around an obelisk of a fake tree, is beautiful when paired with moody lighting and the rich hues of the costumes. But truly, the selling point here is the score by Stephen Flaherty, known also to audiences for his work on Seussical and Ragtime.

Here, a small band led by Robert Nelson is more than enough to pump out the fusion of contemporary Broadway overtones with the synth, steel-drum, and bongo-driven music of the tropics. Its a soundtrack in which the cast singstheir faces off, in particular, Ti Moune, her parents, the four gods, and Andrea.

Once on This Island is chock-full of emotional highs and lows, and its up to the cast to project that in just a little over an hour. At once light-hearted and a tear-jerker, what it gives is a short but sweetode to both love and forgiveness with a Caribbean flavor that audiences wont soon forget. Props to director Bryan Mitchell, his diverse and talented team of actors and singers, and to the Quincy Music Theater on a job well-done.

What: "Once on This Island."

When: 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays and June 3. Through June 4.

Where: The Quincy Music Theatre, 118 E. Washington St., Quincy.

Cost: $18, $15 students, seniors, and military.

Contact: Call 875-9444 or visit qmt.org

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Caribbean fairy tale 'Once on This Island' is short, sweet - Tallahassee.com