Once upon a time

I came to watch a fairy tale.

Once on This Island, I was told, is an adaptation of The Little Mermaid. As I’m one of the thousands of little girls who warbled Disney’s Part of this World in swimming pools all over the world, I found myself looking forward to a happily-ever-after. I was halfway through the play when I realized that I was looking at an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen version, the infinitely more disturbing original about love and sacrifice.

The play begins on a starless, stormy night. Amidst a group of chattering villagers, a little girl cries in fright. In an attempt to beguile the child, the villagers begin telling the story of another little girl, once on this island.

"There is an island where rivers run deep, where the sea sparkling in the sun earns its name Jewel of the Antilles. An island where the poorest of peasants labor, and the wealthiest of grand hommes play."

In this island, a young child named Ti Moune is rescued by the gods from a great flood. Two old peasants find her and raise her up as their own. Young Ti Moune grows up into a beautiful young woman, working the fields but longing to go away to the brilliant world on the other side of the island.

"Oh Gods, Oh Gods, hear my prayer. I’m here on the field with my feet on the ground, waiting for life to begin." It’s one of the most forceful parts of the play, and the picture it presents is one that cannot be easily forgotten: a spirited girl spinning and dancing, Raki Vega’s powerful voice both beseeching and challenging what gods there were. "Wake up! Look down! Hear my prayer, don’t single me out and then forget me! Oh gods, oh gods, let me fly!"

The gods hear her prayer: Asaka of the Earth, Erzulie of Love, Agwe of the Waters and Papa Ge of Death all come together to allow Ti Moune her chance at life. To Ti Moune, it is a chance to fly, to the gods, it is a contest between what power will triumph: Love or Death.

Agwe causes a young grand homme, Daniel, to crash his car on Ti Moune’s side of the island. Despite the peasants’ objections, she nurses him and falls in love with him. When Death came to take Daniel, Ti Moune offers her life and soul in exchange for his. Daniel is taken away to the Hotel Beauxhommes – to his world. Ti Moune follows him and convinces him he needs her. As she lies beside him, people gossip about the peasant girl and the grand homme – how it will never be.

That fact is made truer by one of the most stirring songs in the play, sung by Jeffrey Hidalgo, who effortlessly plays Daniel in love with Ti Moune, yet resigned to the inevitable. "Some girls take hours to paint every perfect nail. Fragrant as flowers, all powdered prim and pale. But you are as wild as the wind-blown tree, as dark and as deep as the midnight sea." The compliments, however, end with the last line: "Some girls you marry, some girls you love."

Daniel tells Ti Moune he is promised to marry another woman, one of his people.

It is then that Papa Ge appears, demanding Ti Moune’s life. He gives her a way out: her soul for Daniel’s life. She takes the knife, yet finds it impossible to kill her love. For days she sits outside the hotel gates until Daniel and his new wife walk out to the streets throwing coins to the peasants. He presses one to her palm, and walks away.

Ti Moune dies, her body passes from god to god untill Asaka lays her on the earth. From where she lies, a tree rises. The storytellers speak of how in years to come, Daniel’s son meets another beautiful peasant girl. Ti Moune’s spirit gives the couple the strength to love each other freely.

It is still a fairy tale – a different one from what I expected, but a fairy tale nonetheless: powerful, whimsical, with an extraordinary cast. It was by no means a perfect play (the audio was weak in some parts) but I’m in no position to complain. I was stunned. My thanks to the gods who made it possible for Bituin Escalante to play Asaka in the opening night, I hear it will be her only performance.

They say that theater requires a momentary suspension of disbelief, a willingness to let the whole word shrink into the few hundred feet that make the stage. I‘m no theater critic, and this is strictly the opinion of a nineteen-year-old kid – but for more than an hour, the story was as true as the rain pouring down EDSA. Maybe it strikes a deeper chord with me than with most people in that audience. After all, I’m still "one small girl," among millions other girls "waiting for life to begin." I’m a sucker for a happily-ever-after, and this is one, albeit infinitely deeper.

This is why the story was told to that first little girl in the middle of a stormy night – "For out of what we live and believe, our lives become the stories that we weave."

Everyone loves a storyteller, and this play is a story told in a way that can never be forgotten.

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