Theatre review: Once On This Island

Regent's Park opens its 2023 Open Air Theatre season with Once On This Island, Lynn Ahrens (book and lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty's (music) loose musical adaptation of The Little Mermaid, reinterpreted as a fable about colourism in Haiti. Ti Moune (Gabrielle Brooks) is introduced as a legend of the island, a dark-skinned foundling girl adopted by Mama Euralie (Natasha Magigi) and Tonton Julian (Chris Jarman.) They are peasants, a class dictated by their darker skin - the wealth and power of the island rests with the lighter-skinned Grands Hommes, descended from Napoleonic settlers and their black mistresses. They congregate at a luxury hotel, banning the peasants from profiting off the tourists, but one day the heir to the hotel fortune has a car accident on the wrong side of the tracks. Ti Moune finds Daniel (Stephenson Ardern-Sodje) close to death.

Theatre review: Once On This Island

After last year’s Bring It On, youth musical theatre company the British Theatre Academy returns for a second summer season at Southwark Playhouse, the centrepiece a revival of Lynn Ahrens (book and lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty’s (music) 1990 fable Once on This Island. Taking its themes (very loosely) from The Little Mermaid and applying them to a story about the legacy of colonialism, it’s set on an island in the French Antilles divided starkly along both geographical and racial lines – there are the black “peasants,” and the white “grands hommes,” descendants of the French colonisers. Orphan Ti Moune (Chrissie Bhima) is discovered in a tree after a tropical storm and rescued by peasants. When she grows up and witnesses a car crash, she believes that the reason she was saved from the storm as a child is so that she can in turn save the driver’s life.

Theatre review: Lucky Stiff

The first show by the Ragtime and Dessa Rose team of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, Lucky Stiff could be a musical version of Weekend at Bernie's - though that film came out a year after this premiered in 1988, for all I know they could both have taken inspiration from Michael Butterworth's 1983 book The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo. Harry Witherspoon (Tom Elliot Reade) is a dull shoe salesman with a wish to lead a more exciting life, but no drive to actually do anything about it. But opportunity falls into his lap when a long-lost American uncle dies, leaving his only living relative $6 million. Obviously there's a catch: Tony's (Ian McCurrach) wealth came late in life, and before he died he'd booked a holiday of a lifetime to take advantage of it. He doesn't see why dying should mean he has to cancel, so in order to get the money Harry has to take Tony's stuffed corpse around Monte Carlo in a wheelchair, sticking to a strict itinerary.

Theatre review: Dessa Rose

Based on a novel by a man named Lear Sherley Anne Williams, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's musical Dessa Rose gets its European premiere by bringing some big voices into the small space of Trafalgar Studio 2. Set in America's Deep South in 1846, it follows the fractious, unlikely friendship between two women, one black, one white. Dessa Rose (Cynthia Erivo) is a pregnant, teenage slave who, when the father of her child is killed, violently rebels. Condemned to be executed once the baby's born she has no intention of sticking around her cell that long. Ruth (Cassidy Janson) is the lonely wife of a plantation owner (John Addison) whose lengthy business trips culminated in him never returning. Raised by a slave who was the only person she ever loved, Ruth is sympathetic to escaped slaves, and doesn't ask many questions if a group of black people turns up on her land.

Theatre review: Ragtime

This year the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park have opted to run just two shows in repertory over the summer, rather than their usual season of four. Ragtime, the 1996 musical adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel with book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, is a story of formative years in modern American culture, following three families from different backgrounds, whose stories will intertwine over the early years of the 20th Century: A well-off white family whose Father (David Birrell) goes off on a Polar expedition only to find some surprising changes at home when he returns; an unmarried black couple with a newborn baby; and a widowed Jewish immigrant (John Marquez) and his daughter. Through them we see an America that's still in the grip of institutional prejudice, but in which the voices calling for civil rights are getting louder.