Once on this Island at PTC is a gorgeous show on the wrong set.
I’m a sucker for stories about the importance of telling stories. I get emotional whenever people wax poetic about passing on knowledge/understanding/emotional and spiritual stability to the next generation. I tear up whenever I see a scene about parents letting their precious children out into the world, with only the thin reassurance of knowing they have done their best to teach them. I also come from a family with a cherished island heritage. So I’m basically the perfect audience member for Pioneer Theatre Company’s production of Once on this Island.
I got to see it with some students today. Two of my daughters were in the audience. A beloved student whose life I know I have influenced in more than just academic ways sat beside me. I was emotionally primed and ready for what this show was poised to deliver.
And deliver it did. The music: fantastic. The casting: flawless. The costuming: triumphant. The choreography: brilliant. The lighting: inspired. The acting: transcendent. The set…
Let’s talk about the set. PTC made the interesting choice to take this show about gods and mortals, influenced by storms and sunshine, celebrating an elemental connection to earth and sea, and set it completely indoors. Two tall walls with partially covered windows stood between us and the glorious sky beyond. A tall chimney surrounded by a kind of loft was the centerpiece of the stage. Most bizarrely, a hard wooden floor covered the entire performing surface.
Oh, I know the trees grew out of the boxes and we technically had an outdoor setting. There were atmospheric effects. Lots of smoke, lots of gorgeously designed lightning. Projected clouds either drifted or raced by, depending on the scene. But those projections were thrown onto the dark wooden slats of the walls, where they were hard to see. The window blew open, but we never got transported out into the storm. Instead, we were confined to an exquisitely designed, but emotionally stifling attic. It seemed like something out of The Neverending Story or Peter Pan.
I think I understand the choice, or at least I have a possible explanation for it. The little girl who the story is being told to was dressed in a school uniform, and the concept seemed to be trying to use her environment to tell a tale from the past that would hopefully connect her to some of what that environment was missing. I could see that, but I couldn’t really feel it.
I felt lots of other things, though. The show moved me to tears as frequently as any show ever has, but I never believed we were seeing the myth unfold in the way it seemed to want us to see it. The gods often gathered in what came off as a kind of indoor treehouse, from which they couldn’t really have the intimate interactions with the mortal world that they sang about. They were aloof, proclaiming their power, but discussing that power in a way that often seemed academic, due to the limited staging opportunities their platform presented them with. Once they came down onto the main stage, they were unstoppable forces. On the platform, they were almost impotent in most scenes.
When other actors ascended to the platform, we would watch them laboring to get up, only to appear for a brief moment, then take more time drawing our focus as they got down. It’s fine to do that with some parts of a set, but this was the center. The focal point of the design. It was distracting more often than powerful.
This is not because of the actors. The actors sold everything about this show in spite of the odd setting. All the other technical work, from the sound mixing to the props, supported them in the best way possible. But, as one of my students said afterwards, it was like they overcame the set to deliver a powerful show, instead of having that set facilitate the power of the show. We never got to go to the poor areas of the island. We never got to watch the actors revel in the sand between their toes, or see their perfect footwork send that sand flying in harmony with the joy or agony of their dances.
Most disappointingly, it didn’t rain. There was projected rain, again, against the dark wood and hard to appreciate. But at that moment when the gods call down the water from heaven to enact their plan, when the music swells and the actor speaks with such force that you think the ceiling of the theatre itself will burst from the force of it, when the actors cower under an umbrella, careen dangerously in a car, or open their bodies heavenward to invoke the blessing and fury of Agwé, we never got the promised deluge. We got a few flickering, falling points of light that cheapened the moment, instead of consummating it.
I rarely give standing ovations, but I leapt to my feet at the end of this show, because it moved me, and this is the standard I go by in making that decision. That it did so without the full support of the set made it all the more impressive. This is a show worth seeing. If you have the chance to go, you absolutely should. Go, if only for the cast, as it’s hard to imagine a better one. Just know that, if you do go, you’ll be seeing Once on this Island, moved off the island.
I got to see it with some students today. Two of my daughters were in the audience. A beloved student whose life I know I have influenced in more than just academic ways sat beside me. I was emotionally primed and ready for what this show was poised to deliver.
And deliver it did. The music: fantastic. The casting: flawless. The costuming: triumphant. The choreography: brilliant. The lighting: inspired. The acting: transcendent. The set…
Let’s talk about the set. PTC made the interesting choice to take this show about gods and mortals, influenced by storms and sunshine, celebrating an elemental connection to earth and sea, and set it completely indoors. Two tall walls with partially covered windows stood between us and the glorious sky beyond. A tall chimney surrounded by a kind of loft was the centerpiece of the stage. Most bizarrely, a hard wooden floor covered the entire performing surface.
Oh, I know the trees grew out of the boxes and we technically had an outdoor setting. There were atmospheric effects. Lots of smoke, lots of gorgeously designed lightning. Projected clouds either drifted or raced by, depending on the scene. But those projections were thrown onto the dark wooden slats of the walls, where they were hard to see. The window blew open, but we never got transported out into the storm. Instead, we were confined to an exquisitely designed, but emotionally stifling attic. It seemed like something out of The Neverending Story or Peter Pan.
I think I understand the choice, or at least I have a possible explanation for it. The little girl who the story is being told to was dressed in a school uniform, and the concept seemed to be trying to use her environment to tell a tale from the past that would hopefully connect her to some of what that environment was missing. I could see that, but I couldn’t really feel it.
I felt lots of other things, though. The show moved me to tears as frequently as any show ever has, but I never believed we were seeing the myth unfold in the way it seemed to want us to see it. The gods often gathered in what came off as a kind of indoor treehouse, from which they couldn’t really have the intimate interactions with the mortal world that they sang about. They were aloof, proclaiming their power, but discussing that power in a way that often seemed academic, due to the limited staging opportunities their platform presented them with. Once they came down onto the main stage, they were unstoppable forces. On the platform, they were almost impotent in most scenes.
When other actors ascended to the platform, we would watch them laboring to get up, only to appear for a brief moment, then take more time drawing our focus as they got down. It’s fine to do that with some parts of a set, but this was the center. The focal point of the design. It was distracting more often than powerful.
This is not because of the actors. The actors sold everything about this show in spite of the odd setting. All the other technical work, from the sound mixing to the props, supported them in the best way possible. But, as one of my students said afterwards, it was like they overcame the set to deliver a powerful show, instead of having that set facilitate the power of the show. We never got to go to the poor areas of the island. We never got to watch the actors revel in the sand between their toes, or see their perfect footwork send that sand flying in harmony with the joy or agony of their dances.
Most disappointingly, it didn’t rain. There was projected rain, again, against the dark wood and hard to appreciate. But at that moment when the gods call down the water from heaven to enact their plan, when the music swells and the actor speaks with such force that you think the ceiling of the theatre itself will burst from the force of it, when the actors cower under an umbrella, careen dangerously in a car, or open their bodies heavenward to invoke the blessing and fury of Agwé, we never got the promised deluge. We got a few flickering, falling points of light that cheapened the moment, instead of consummating it.
I rarely give standing ovations, but I leapt to my feet at the end of this show, because it moved me, and this is the standard I go by in making that decision. That it did so without the full support of the set made it all the more impressive. This is a show worth seeing. If you have the chance to go, you absolutely should. Go, if only for the cast, as it’s hard to imagine a better one. Just know that, if you do go, you’ll be seeing Once on this Island, moved off the island.
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