Nothing Hurts More Than a Broken Heart
Ti Moune follows her dreams, and maybe we should too
“Let me tell you about ‘Once on This Island,’” says caryn desai; “why people should want to see it.”
Yes, why should they? her interviewer replies.
“Love is probably the chief motivator in our actions in life,” desai continues. “The need for love, the desire for love, and this is absolutely a love story. And it’s [about] a young girl who, against great adversity, follows her dream for love; and she’s so committed to it [that] she goes up against the gods.”
The story takes place on a Caribbean island – Rosa Guy, in her novel, My Love, My Love, set it in the French Antilles – and concerns pretty but poor Ti Moune who falls hard for Daniel, who hails from a well-to-do family. Apparently having nothing better to do, the island gods not only take notice but wager over the outcome.
“Will love conquer death?” says desai, “or will death win? And is she willing to pay the price for love?”
And we can only find out if we see the show.
“There you go!” desai says with a laugh.
“Once on This Island,” its book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty, played on Broadway in 1990 and ’91. It was successful enough to garner eight Tony nominations, including one for Best Musical, although it came up empty-handed. It fared a little better in England, however, and won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical. caryn desai directed it a few years back for International City Theatre (ICT), where she’s the artistic director – and a living legend (along with husband Shashin Desai) in the Long Beach theater community.
desai is again at the helm of “Once on This Island.” Opening Saturday at 8 p.m., it’s being performed over three weekends in the Campus Theatre at El Camino College in Torrance.
Where’s Harry Belafonte?
Ahrens’ and Flaherty’s musical is calypso-flavored and colorfully Caribbean, “but it has a serious heart,” as Ahrens herself has pointed out. “This show deals with issues of racial prejudices; it’s also about parents and their children and the inevitability of growth, change, grief, and letting go.”
desai notes that it could be staged with an all-black cast, but in a community college attended by students of every race and ethnicity this limits who might audition. That said, the first production that desai directed at El Camino – back in 1995 – was August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” The school was actually looking for a black director – which was what Wilson himself strongly preferred – but desai ended up with the assignment because she’d previously directed plays that featured various ethnicities.
The cast for “Once on This Island” was selected by desai along with her production team – musical director Brent Crayon, vocal director Joanna Nachef, choreographer Camden Gonzales, and the theater department’s artistic director, Ron Scarlata.
“You were asking about the challenges,” desai says. “Well, anytime you’re doing a musical that requires singing, dancing, and acting then you know it’s harder to cast.” In this show, as is usually the case, the majority of the actors are students at El Camino. Non-students can also audition – but then they become students by default since being in the play is like being in a class and one needs to enroll. Or, as desai puts it, “It’s a great way for people who didn’t choose acting as a career… to go back and stay fresh while they have day jobs.”
In the opening scenes of the musical Ti Moune is eight or nine years old, and not too many kids are attending college at that age.
“I have two little Ti Mounes in the show,” desai says, “because I had these two young girls that auditioned who were just so good. And I thought, You know what? I’m gonna use both of them. Plus both of them have their dads in the show as well.”
So the young misses, Olivia Aniceto and Fiona Okida, will trade-off performances, while their fathers – Roy Okida as Papa Ge and Vincent Aniceto as Tonton – appear in every show. Perhaps there are yet other gods wagering which of the two girls will grow up to give Meryl Streep a run for her money.
