Caribbean Key

The cast is black, the scenery is spare (albeit colorful), and the story features whimsical gods and a tragic heroine who eventually turns into a tree. If this sounds to you like an unlikely mix for a Broadway musical, then you haven't seen Once on This Island, last spring's Off Broadway hit which opens this month at the Booth Theatre. Based on a novel by Rosa Guy and created by the songwriting team of Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens—both of whom are white and neither of whom has set foot in the French Antilles, where the musical is set—Island is a fairy tale a la Hans Christian Andersen with a little Margaret Mead thrown in. Just don't expect any Sondheim-style deconstructions here. This is unabashed, calypso-spiced make-believe. Pleasantly strange things can, and regularly do, occur. Which may explain what this show is doing on Broadway in the first place.

J.R.