Once On This Island - Was 1991 A Slow Year?

I don't think ONCE ON THIS ISLAND is that old...is it?

UPDATE: Just checked. Yeah....try 1990.

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Updated On: 4/4/07 at 06:10 PM

I actually love this show, but it was the first musical I was ever in, so maybe I'm a bit biased!
I haven't listened to it in a long time, but I love Why We Tell The Story and Human Heart even now 7 years later.

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I just did a production of this. I used to agree with you, FOA, but now having done the show and knowing what it is about, I understand it much more and find it to be quite beautiful. Its not a traditional musica. Lynn Ahrens wanted to write a whole piece about storytelling and how the stories we learned a children have effected our day to day lives.

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I adore the music, but think the plot is awful. I mean, the girl turns into a tree!

It was a bit of a slow year. The only other new musicals that were eligible but not nominated were Shogun and Buddy.

This high school production you saw - was it cast with performers of the correct ethnicity, or was it the typical high school OOTI with a bunch of blue-eyed, blonde-haired white kids?

How could have it been a slow year? If I'm not mistaken, Once On This Island lost the Best Musical Tony to Will Rogers Follies in a category which also contained The Secret Garden and Miss Saigon. Hardly a slow year in my opinion.

Also, "I adore the music, but think the plot is awful. I mean, the girl turns into a tree!" You kinda need to see the show to understand that it isn't really based in reality. It's all about the magic of storytelling...I mean how many fairy tales have you been told where something completely unbelievable happens and you just go along with it because it's part of the story?

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i agree lupone and bwaynick....

I think anyone who sees it...is enchanted.

I think that this is one of their better shows. I first heard about it on Morning Edition on NPR and bought a recording of the show and loved it, without ever having seen it.

Flaherty's melodies are infectuous and Ahren's work is excellent. If it seems like "a children's show", you have to remember that the characters singing the songs are not educated people. I think that they work perfectly. In fact when she has the mother rhyme "dancers" with "answers", I feel it comes across as too clever.

I didn't get to see the show in New York, but I saw the national tour.

And I did see a college production of it with a virtually all white cast (The show starts with a bunch of white, clean cut college kids wearing raggedy clothes huddled by a "fire." My first thought was, "This looks like it could be the musical version of "I Know What You Did Last Summer"...), and the show still worked!

I still teared up when she died.

The show got cheated at the Tony Awards. It should have gotten Best Score, at least. ("Will Rogers Follies" won because Betty Comden and Adolph Green survived "A Doll's Life")

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Once On This Island is one of my favorite shows. I was assistant director for a community theatre production of the show a few years ago, and that's when I became more familiar with it. The ending makes me crazy. I think it was a really bad writing choice, but as a whole, it makes for a very entertaining show and I find the music quite moving. I also have to say that the cast recording doesn't do the show justice. When its staged, with the choreography, brightly colored sets and costumes, puppetry, the "Rain" scene... its spectacular.

With a strong cast, this show works really really well. With a weaker cast, this show can be a disaster. Of course, that can be said for most any show.

The only song I've heard from the show is "Waitig for Life" Someone in my theatre department performed it at a workshop while I was in New York for Spring Break and her performance makes me want to get the cd to hear the rest of it. She really did a great job with it.

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It's actually my second fave Flaherty/Ahrens score and show after Ragtime (With Man of No Importance a close third--such an underated score and show)

That said it took me a long time ot get into.... I *loved* Ragtime and so bought this as my next show by them way back in 98 or so and was really disappointed--at first the only song that really caught me was Some Girls--but after a whiel it really connected to me. I dunno I think it's a really sweet, simple and moving show--I don't find it cheasy at all (and I have a low tolerance of chease--usually...)


I hear the Broadway transfer was a mistake--it made the show too big... Don't Disney own the rights to this?

Updated On: 4/4/07 at 08:55 PM