Not Just A High School Production

Once On This Island is a famous musical. If you search Once On This Island on Youtube, there are 424,000 results. People from all over the world like this musical. This play was adapted from the novel, My Love, My Love, which is another adaption of the Little Mermaids. It narrates a journey of a girl, Desiree. Luckily, Once On This Island was reproduced in Black Box. Personally, though it still has some flaws, I think this was a successful production, either from acting or music perspective. It got several talented actors, such as Julia, Samantha, Charlotte… The whole team can even be called a “all-star cast”. However, since this is a musical, I will focus more on the music performance and other small but interesting points.

The musical indeed impressed me, and I think it was smart to accentuate the strengths and avoid the weaknesses. A good pit band is always necessary for a good musical. Through the whole performance, the pit band was doing fantastic. Especially, the change of instruments when scenes were changing brought audience more into the play. When the scene was sad, the flute just made the play more emotional. Personally, I think this musical was actually better than last musical, Spelling Bee. In Spelling Bee, there were more solos, however Once On This Island had more choruses and harmonies. In Spelling Bee, the solos were flawed. When one person was singing, if he made mistakes, it was obvious. Also, I don’t think actors in Spelling Bee are all good singers. However, Once On This Island, actors were actually all professional singers. Also, choruses and harmonies could better foil the atmosphere, and it can always hide the flaws a few singers have. One of the most impressive things in the whole musical was the bird tweets, the harmony. It was beautiful, and high vocals alternated with the low vocals. In short, music performance is the soul of a musical, and in Once On This Island, the good performance was actually a plus.

Another thing I want to talk about is the little details, include both interesting spots and some flaws. Firstly, Wiebka’s narration was creative. It was important to let the audience understand what was going on. Normally, there were not many people read the book, My Love, My Love before, so a narration was helpful. Also, this narration was pretty creative. Instead one person is talking on the stage, the puppet idea was more interesting and more understandable. In addition, there was a noticeable shortcoming in the musical. During the whole show, when there was a chorus, everybody should sing. However, there were a girl and a boy who never opened their mouths. This was usually not a good thing to do on stage. When I first performed on the stage, my teacher told me that: “when you are on stage, any movement will be captured by the audience, so behave properly.” The two actors were really noticeable, and this should not happen. Consequently, the narration idea was interesting, and the advantages in the musical actually covered the little weakness.

 In conclusion, the musical was an impressive production, either from acting and music perspectives. Though some little imperfections still existed, the whole thing was wonderful. Moreover, from Julia’s performance, I learned a lot. I hope after the musical, I can perform better in our own play.