Tag's Breezy `Island' -- Caribbean Fairy Tale Is Fine For Kids; Just Don't Expect Too Much

----------------------------------------------------------------- Theater review

"Once on This Island." Book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, music by Stephen Flaherty. Directed by Stephen Terrell. Produced by Tacoma Actors Guild, 915 Broadway, Tacoma. Tuesdays-Sundays through April 9. 272-2145. -----------------------------------------------------------------

The key to enjoying the Tacoma Actors Guild production of "Once on This Island" is to adjust your expectations properly. And bring a child.

Look to this modest, glossy little Broadway musical for an accurate picture of Caribbean life, or for an authentic echo of indigenous island music, and you will be frustrated. Major anthropology, it's not.

Approach it as sophisticated fare for grown-ups, and you'll be barking up the wrong palm tree.

What "Once on This Island" does offer is an upbeat, pop calypso fairy tale, simplistic enough for a grammar school child or young adolescent to grasp and enjoy - and pretty hokey for their elders.

Even when the show most resembles an extended Bon Marche commercial ("Day-o! One day sale-o!"), or puts a Disneyfied gloss on a complex religion and culture, the talented African-American cast infuses it with warmth and vitality.

Led by Lisa Estridge-Gray, who charms as the winsome protagonist Ti Moune, the ensemble performs with a joy and energy that sometimes (though not always) makes up for the vocal firepower it lacks.

A family musical

Though TAG has not marketed "Once on This Island" as a family event, that is really what composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist-author Lynn Ahrens have wrought. And it's why the musical has enjoyed such success in middle- and high-school productions, since its 1990 premiere in New York.

Consider the origins of this fable set in the French Antilles. It is based closely on "My Love, My Love," a novel for young people by Trinidadian author Rosa Guy. And Guy's book, in turn, recasts themes found in the classic Hans Christian Andersen tale "The Little Mermaid."

As in the Broadway production, director-choreographer Stephen Terrell stages "Once on This Island" on a single tropicana set of overhanging flowers, palm fronds and other greenery, designed here by Carey Wong.

And he moves it along as a piece of dance-story-theater, with the performers relying on their voices and ensemble gestures (with a little help from Rob Jones' lighting) to evoke a raging Pacific storm, a car crash and other pertinent effects.

The legend they impart - sluggish in Act I, peppier later - concerns a pretty girl named Ti Moune. Played as a youngster by Amy Gabel, and as a young woman by Estridge-Gray, Ti Moune is saved by the gods during a storm that kills her parents.

Raised by a poor but kindly peasant couple (Cynthia Jones and Stanley Perryman), Ti Moune grows up longing for more romance and excitement than her small village offers. Her destiny appears in the form of Daniel (tall, striking Mario Burrell), the handsome son of a wealthy Creole clan who crashes his car near her home.

Though warned by her family and the gods not to fraternize with the rich, Ti Moune tends Daniel's wounds and falls for him. Of course, class and racial differences inevitably divide them. And, as in many fairy tales, the loss of love equals death - but also eternal life. Ti Moune may die of a broken heart, but the gods bring her back as a sturdy tree. This dreamy but unliberated parable gets conveyed in Flaherty's wrap-around score, a pleasant if rather innocuous mesh of slick pop hooks and light Afro-Haitian accents, dispatched fluidly by musical director Richard Gray and a small pit band.

Smooth ensemble numbers

Ensemble rousers like "We Dance" (which comes uncomfortably close to reinforcing that old idea about poor folks having more fun), "Mama Will Provide" (with a lusty contribution from Jamaica Filgo, as the goddess Asaka) and "Why We Tell This Story" go down as sweet and easy as a papaya milkshake.

The ballads are more problematic, given the strain in some of the thinner voices. The strongest pipes belong to Perryman, whose hearty "One Small Girl" makes you wish he had more to sing.

Terrell's dance routines are quite basic, compared with the limbo-lounge displays in the New York version. But they do radiate good cheer. And the actors, who also include David Scully, Timothy Piggee, Virlinda Stanton and Mari Lynn Watly, appear to be thoroughly enjoying themselves.