Once on this Island at Paper Mill Playhouse

[skynyc]

Since award season started, I haven't been to the theater much, but am starting to get back on the horse...

I highly recommend this production at Paper Mill of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's first Broadway endeavor, before Ragtime, Seussical and My Favorite Year. This is a Caribbean-flavored gem based on a short story by Rosa Guy, (and The Little Mermaid, without the Disney-fication.) The score will transport you south, and the singing will take you to heaven.

The director manages to make the cast of eleven fill the sometimes cavernous theater, and the use of puppetry and props is inventive and engaging.

Syesha Mercado, the young lady playing Ti Moune, the role that put La Chanze on the map twenty years ago, is marvelous, and can sing and dance and convey the fairly wide emotional range. (She was the second runner up on American Idol Season Seven.)

The other cast members are great, including Broadway veteran Darius deHaas; Adam Jacobs, the Lion King's current Simba, (on hiatus to do this role); and Kenita Miller, whom I saw play Celie in Color Purple on Broadway.

The show only plays one more week, through 6/24, and I will probably go to see it again.

Paper Mill is an easy 40 minute train-ride from Penn, and a lovely little town to enjoy a coffee and a stroll before the show.

The show runs 90 minutes without an intermission, and I was able to get a good discount on Broadway Box.