Review of the performance

The performance Once On the Island is indeed a very impressive musical performance. It is adapted from the novel “ My Love, My Love” and although it is a musical version, it gives audience a generally well-rounded story. I like it more than a regular play. The effort that all those people participate in the performance is quite noticeable. There are quite a lot places in the performance can be seen as creative. First one is the background. The painting makes a direct connection to the story: there are poor village on the left end side and rich community on the right end side with a large forest in between, showing the journey of Ti Moune from her home to Daniel’s hotel. The second one is the part where the performers choose to use little paper men to tell the story of the history of the beauxhome family while Webeke stood on a stair as a storyteller. That really gave me a refresh visual.

There are two things that are extraordinary in my point of view. I had never realized how many great singers in our school until that Sunday when I saw the performance. Every singer and actor combined the songs and the story so well. Ryan and the actor of Ti Moune did make their characters more charming with their songs; especially, the way Ti Moune showed her emotions and sang change my impression of Ti Moune being a simply naive person who thinks herself higher than other peasants and are destined to have Daniel’s love. With those songs, the transition of Daniel is more detailed than the book in which brings Andrea to the presence suddenly and  has no description of why Daniel changed his love. “Some girls you love and some girls you marry” explained Daniel’s inner struggle of love and the way he acted shows Daniel still has feelings of love to Ti Moune. Besides, the music and songs indeed make a harmony. The musical band has made a great contribution to the overall success. As far as I can notice, there is only one sound that comes from the computer, which is the sound of thunder at the start of the performance, and all these other sound are all comes from the band. The variety of musical instruments and students involved in the band are quite amazing.

All those themes from the original novels are presented in the performance. The theme of poor and rich is showed thorough costumes and lines ( Peasants are all barefooted with poor poor clothes). The theme of Gods is showed by constantly letting four gods stay on four sides of the stage with pops that coincide with their identities. However, The last part in which Ti Moune transfers into a tree is a little bit confusing and I like the original version that she disappears with butterflies more.