BROADWAY REVIEW: 'Once On This Island' Theater Review
David Rooney
December 3, 2017:
The plight of real-world communities struck by natural disasters adds a powerful emotional charge to Michael Arden's immersive revival of this captivating 1990 musical fairy tale by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty.
Walking into Broadway's Circle in the Square and taking in the environmental staging of the lovingly crafted
Once on This Island revival — with an upturned boat on the edge of a sandbagged pool of water, ensemble members milling barefoot around a steel-drum fire, shoes and clothing hung out to dry all over the theater, medics tending to the sick, and a live goat weaving its way among the cast — the visual association hits you instantly. The vivid scene is impossible to separate from recent news footage of storm-ravaged Puerto Rico, or going further back, Haiti after the 2010 earthquake; the reference would be clear even without director Michael Arden's program note.
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