Musicals, like most works of art, fall into several categories with regard to their purpose. Some have no morals and simply serve to entertain. It is easy to spot these shows because any attempt to derive a moral from them will only produce ludicrous results such as “Don’t feed the plant” and “Don’t tick off the psycho guy who lives in the basement of the old opera house.” On the other end of the spectrum are shows which, like uptight stockbrokers, have a large, complicated web of stringent morals such that any attempt to encapsulate all of them in one sentence would lead to a confusing, grammatically incorrect mess.
And then there are shows like Once on this Island which, like small children, have simple morals which can oftentimes be summarized in a single sentence, such as, “Don’t pretend to be a prince of Arabia when you’re really only a street rat”. Like the classic musical West Side Story, Once on this Island is a story in which characters defy boundaries of race and class, but where West Side Story is gritty and suspenseful, Island is merely passive and pastel.
1. We Dance
2. One Small Girl
3. Waiting For Life
4. And The Gods Heard Her Prayer / Rain
5. Pray
6. Forever Yours
7. Sad Tale Of The Beauxhommes, The
8. Ti Moune
9. Mama Will Provide
10. Some Say
11. Human Heart, The
12. Pray (reprise)
13. Some Girls
14. Ball, The
15. Ti Moune's Dance
16. When We Are Wed
17. Forever Yours (reprise)
18. Part Of Us, A
19. Why We Tell The Story
Once on This Island
