Copious Notes

Ti Moune (Tai-Kristin Smedley) is oblvious to plans being made for her by Erzulie (Alicia Helm McCorvey), Papa Ge (Jason Thompson) and Asaka (Tamera Izlar). Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

After several summers of giving us musicals with songs we know by heart, SummerFest delivers a show with a story that will stay in our hearts.

And some of the tunes may stay with us too.

Like Hair (SummerFest 2008) and Jesus Christ Superstar (2004), writer Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty’s Once on This Island is a distinctly contemporary musical, and it scored a 1991 Tony Award nomination for best musical (Will Rogers Follies won). A lot of people who have seen the show love it, which means it should gain some new adherents this weekend as it closes out SummerFest at the Arboretum.

In some ways, Island seems ideally suited to the Arboretum venue. It is set on a Caribbean island and its story is intertwined with nature. The gods of earth (Tamera Izlar) and the ocean (Luther Lewis III) are co-conspirators in the story of Ti Moune (Tarynn Grundy as a girl and Tai-Kristin Smedley as an adult), a peasant girl orphaned in a flood whose love and innocence eventually conquers the cruelty and vapidity of racism.

Ti Moune is convinced she was saved in the flood for a purpose, and later comes to believe that is to save Daniel (Adam Fister), a rich boy injured in a car crash during another harrowing storm. Ti Moune’s love for Daniel is at the center of a bet between Papa Ge (Jason Thompson), the demon of death, and Erzulie (Alicia Helm McCorvey), the goddess of love, as to which one is stronger.

Death, “can stop a heart from beating, but not from loving,” Erzulie tells Papa Ge in a line you should pay attention to.

The strength in Margo Buchanan’s production is several of the performances and her often telling staging.

One of the best moments is when Daniel sings Some Girls to Ti Moune. All the while, on a platform above and behind them, Andrea (Taylor Eldred), the rich girl Daniel’s been promised to since childhood, is getting ready for the dance they will all attend. It’s visually as telling as the lyric, “Some girls you marry, and some girls you love.” Pay attention to that one, too.

Fister you’ll remember as Claude in Hair. Smedley is the first performer in the show who truly fills the Arboretum when she enters singing Waiting for Life. She provides the show with a sweet star to root for. Thompson as her nemisis, Papa Ge, is also a commanding presence in a his voice, laugh and lithe movement.

As Ti Moune’s adoptive mother, Julie-Ann Aguhob builds on her head turning performance at Grand Night for Singing in June, though she was one of several performers plagued by microphone problems Thursday night.

Despite the appropriateness of the outdoor setting, the show sometimes has trouble filling the Arboretum, in some cases due to the lightness of Flaherty’s touch. Some airy, transitional moments have trouble competing with the surroundings, such as the Arboretum’s location near two hosptials (with emergency rooms).

What does work really well in that atmosphere is Island’s format with storytellers relaying the tale in its immediacy and history of class conflict and island legend. Even if, at the back of the amphitheater, you miss some subtle moments between characters, you get the broad themes of nature and love overcoming the unnatural barriers people put between themselves.

No, not everything works in Once on This Island. But a lot does, and who doesn’t want a little island get away on a summer night?

SummerFest closes out its 2009 season with the musical Once on This Island by writer Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty. The musical tells the story of Ti Moune, a peasant girl in Haiti who believes the gods spared her life so she could save a rich boy, Daniel, and fall in love with him. The production is directed by Margo Buchanan. Performances are July 22-26 at the Arboretum on Alumni Drive. Photos by Rich Copley | staff.

Feature: UK Opera students spend summer exploring musical theater in Once on This Island.

Tai-Kristin Smedley is Ti Moune, Luther Lewis III is Agwe, Manuel Castillo is Armand, and Taylor Eldred is Andrea in SummerFest's production of "Once on This Island" at the Arboretum on Alumni Drive July 22-26. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

University of Kentucky opera singers aren’t developing their musical theater skills only at It’s a Grand Night for Singing.

This week, in Once on This Island, ­SummerFest fans will see students’ increasing ­efforts to diversify their talents.

While many of their ­colleagues in the UK School of Music headed off to summer festivals, workshops and other programs across the country and overseas, four students stayed in Lexington to be part of the cast of the musical, based in part on The Little Mermaid.

For doctoral student Manuel Castillo, it is a first brush with musical theater.

“I don’t have a lot of ­experience with musicals, so I knew it would be a good ­opportunity to learn and get a little taste of it,” says Castillo, 35, from Guadalajara, Mexico.

For Taylor Eldred, the show is familiar territory. The ­Lexington native was in shows in the Arboretum when the event was the Lexington ­Shakespeare Festival, and she was in a production of Once on This Island at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts.

Margo Buchanan.

But none of those ­productions was under the ­direction of her college acting coach, Margo Buchanan.

“When Margo said she was doing Once on This Island out at the park, I said, that’s a great opportunity to be out there with the family,” says Eldred, 21, a rising senior in vocal ­performance.

Luther Lewis III, 22, and ­Tai-Kristin Smedley, 21, the other students in the cast, also got their starts in musicals, before immersing themselves in opera. All four students have sung in recent UK productions such as La Bohème and Lucia di Lammermoor.

“Vocally, it is not as hard as opera,” Castillo says of the ­musical by writer and lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, whose other shows include Ragtime and Seussical.

“But there’s a lot of dancing and movement and staging, and it requires another kind of intensity in the acting.”

And there’s the point of getting opera students into musicals and on other stages.

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SummerFest presents Patti Heying’s production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde July 15-19, 2009, in the Arboretum on Alumni Drive. In this version, Jekyll is played by one actor (Bob Singleton) and Hyde is played by four different actors who interact with Jekyll. Photos by Rich Copley | staff.

Lexington’s annual theatrical rite of summer in the Arboretum kicks off this week with SummerFest’s production of William Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, directed by Joe Ferrell. Here’s a look at Act 1.

Walter Tunis as Falstaff, Jesse Hungerford as Edward (Ned) Poins and Trent Fucci as Prince Hal rehearse SummerFest's production of William Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Part 1," being presented July 8-12 at the Arboretum on Alumni Drive. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Trent Fucci was doing what was normal for guys in his family.

His grandfather, Dominic Anthony Fucci, was an All-American in football and baseball at the University of Kentucky in the late 1940s, and he briefly played for the Detroit Lions in the National Football League.

His father, Sam Fucci, was a baseball and track standout at Tates Creek High School and played baseball for Auburn University. His uncle, Dominic Anthony Fucci Jr., was the 1975 Kentucky Mr. Basketball who also played baseball for Auburn and was drafted by the Chicago White Sox, making it to the teams’ Triple A affiliate.

Trent’s cousin, Ryan Fucci, is currently a baseball standout at Tates Creek.

As Trent was getting started in sports, playing T-Ball, his mom, Holly Fucci, noticed that whenever he wasn’t on the field, he was over at the stands, “entertaining the audience,” Fucci recalls, catching himself referring to sports fans as, “the audience.”

Fucci says, “My mom said, ‘We need to get you into a theater program.’”

And he did do some theater, in school at Tates Creek. But he also stayed with sports, all the way through his Freshman year at Transylvania University, where he played baseball.

“Finally, it became apparent that I needed to focus on theater,” Fucci says.

And his stage career since is another example why as much as we watch college sports programs to look for future sports stars, it’s also worth watching the stages for future marquee actors.

Fucci has gone on to graduate school at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where he will spend his last year, the 2010-11 academic year, as an intern at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater.

And it was Orlando and the prestigious Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival that helped point Fucci toward his biggest role in his hometown.

Looking for a monologue to perform in the Festival, a couple of University of Central Florida professors pointed Fucci to Prince Hal from William Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I. Fucci’s performance of the monologue that ends Act I earned him the classical acting award in the competition.

This week, Fucci will expand his performance of that role from a signature monologue to the entire show in SummerFest’s production of Henry IV, Part I.

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