Once On This Island

I had the opportunity to go see the musical titled Once on This Island directed by James Santos and based upon the novel “My Love, My Love” by Rosa Guy. The musical was performed at the Cascade Theatre in Redding California. The leading character Ti Moune was performed by Tiffany Rodrigues. The play was portrayed as a story within a story. It starts out with a terrible storm on a little island in the Carribean. To have the time pass by faster the tribe members get together to tell the story of Ti Moune. Ti Moune was a young peasant girl who falls in love with a wealthy French man. Ti Moune was saved by the gods from a past storm much like the one the tribe is facing now. As she grows up she believes she was saved for a purpose.

In the process of saving Daniel (the French man) she falls in love with him and is willing to give up her own life to the God of Death in order to spare Daniel’s. So Ti Moune ends up going to the gated community of where the other French settlers live with Daniel. It turns out that Ti Moune ultimately is the force behind breaking down the gate that separates the settlers and the islanders. It shows that Ti Moune’s “courage and spirit prove that love can withstand the storm, cross the Earth, and survive even in the face of death.” This gives the islanders hope whenever they are faced with terrible storms; that the storms are for a greater purpose.

A quote that the directed highlights at the end is “For out of what we live and we believe, our lives become the stories that we weave.” I loved this because it reminds that we are in control of our lives and we have the power to shape them the way we want them to be. This play was outstanding and was much more than I expected it to be. An eye opening part was act 15, where Ti Moune was at the ball of the French settlers. It really portrayed how different each culture is with their dancing. Ti Moune being an islander of the Caribbean and everyone else being descendants of the French. The way that they all stared at Ti Moune with a look of shock truly shows how when cultures first started intertwining how weird and even a little scary it must have been.

Overall I really enjoyed this show. It was exciting and it really sucked the audience into the storyline. Looking around, everyone was on the edge of their seat to see how it all ended for Ti Moune. I won’t be giving that away because there are still more showings available throughout the next couple of weeks. To see upcoming events just google the Cascade Theatre.