About the work
Once on This Island is a musical with music by Stephen Flaherty and book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, based on Rosa Guy's novel "My Love, My Love". It premiered Off-Broadway in 1990 and reached Broadway the same year. As an intermissionless, sung-through one-act fairy tale with Caribbean colour, it tells a moving story of love across class boundaries – carried by a rousing score inspired by the music of the Antilles.
Plot
On an island in the French Antilles, villagers comfort a frightened child with a story: the poor peasant Ti Moune is raised as an orphan by an older couple and believes she is destined by the gods for a special fate. When she rescues and nurses the gravely injured Daniel, the son of a wealthy, light-skinned family, she falls hopelessly in love with him. To save him, she makes a pact with the goddess of death and follows Daniel into his cloistered world – where social barriers, skin colour and class snobbery stand against their love. From her sacrifice, a lasting, hopeful legend ultimately grows.
Cultural significance
Once on This Island expanded the Broadway repertoire with Caribbean sounds and an Afro-diasporic narrative perspective and is regarded as one of the warmest, most heartfelt works of the team of Flaherty and Ahrens. The acclaimed 2018 revival won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical and confirmed the timeless power of the material. With numbers such as "Waiting for Life" and "Mama Will Provide", the show combines rousing joie de vivre with a moving parable about love, faith and the survival of stories.