Caught up in life’s buoyant dance

“We dance,” sings the cast of “Once on This Island,” and dancing is life in Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s breakthrough 1990 musical. This winsome Caribbean gloss on “The Little Mermaid” turns the rhythms and angles of Haitian celebration into narrative virtues.

Ahrens’ libretto, based on a Rosa Guy novel, skims Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, substituting the deities and caste system of the French Antilles. Flood-delivered foundling Ti Moune (a stellar Darlesia Cearcy) meets her destiny in Daniel (Miles Wesley), a young grand homme of the mulatto upper class. It ends with bittersweet self-sacrifice, making its cyclical point in the finale: “For out of what we live and we believe / Our lives become the stories that we weave.”

At times, Ahrens’ unforced lyrics and Flaherty’s buoyant music anticipate their masterwork, “Ragtime.” Director Ron Kellum gives his bright Fullerton Civic Light Opera edition as much import as the property will bear. He, choreographer Marvin Thornton and the Gauguin-fanciful designs from Music Theatre of Wichita recall Graciela Daniele’s original staging without feeling prefabricated.

The fine ensemble circles about Cearcy’s entrancing Ti Moune, her smile as vibrant as her talent. Wesley makes a sympathetic, smooth-toned Daniel. Karen McClain and Addison Witt give Ti Moune’s adoptive parents ample appeal, and the four gods (Vanita Harbour, Nikkema Taylor, Allen Christopher and Thornton) are delightfully full-blown. They and their colleagues, including Justin Nicole High’s unaffected Little Ti Moune, maintain storybook focus.

Their zeal offsets the outsized venue. The necessary amplification and musical director Grant Rohr’s synthesized combo sometimes tax delicacy and lyrics. Regardless, this “Island” imparts the invigorating essentials of its palpable human heart.

David C. Nichols

*

“Once on This Island,” Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Also, 2 p.m. July 30. Ends July 31. $22-$45. (714) 879-1732 or (714) 526-3832. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

*

As they sow, so shall they reap

Elliptical yet overwrought, John O’Keefe’s “Reapers,” a world-premiere production at the Odyssey, starts as an austere meditation on primitivism and the nature of evil but ultimately segues into mind-boggling excess.

Veteran playwright O’Keefe was rightfully heralded for “Times Like These,” a factually based drama about the star-crossed marriage of a Jewish actress and her Aryan husband forced into deadly measures by Hitler’s Reich. Beautifully well realized, “Times” showed a domestic microcosm imploding under the forces of external evil. More sweeping in scale, “Reapers” also examines a domestic microcosm -- that of the Foxes, a hardscrabble Iowa farm family. But this time, the pressures that destroy the Foxes are not generated by malevolent outsiders but by the Foxes’ own endemic corruption -- ancestral cruelty that prompts a cleansing purge from Mother Nature herself.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer family. The Foxes are steeped in generational violence, with nagging hints of incest. From the opening monologue (and the author’s own program notes), we understand that the family is already dead, wiped out by unprecedented tornadoes. Whether the play transpires in existential flashback or whether we see the Foxes in a hellish afterlife is unclear. What is clear is that these characters are overdue for a righteous comeuppance.

Mike Durst’s virtuosic lighting, foreboding blues with flashes of lightning, aptly suggests the coming holocaust. The play’s scale is somewhat self-consciously Greek, but these characters are so barbarous and unsympathetic that their eventual downfall is more relief than catharsis. O’Keefe directs his own work in a hyper-histrionic style that makes Tennessee Williams seem tame by comparison. The able cast fully commits to O’Keefe’s intriguing vision, but the play’s effectively cryptic themes are swept away in the vortex of overstatement.

-- F. Kathleen Foley

“Reapers,” Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, call for Sunday times. $20.50-$25. (310) 477-2055. www.odysseytheatre.com. Running time: 2 hours.

*

Off into the world; oh, ‘Lucky Per’

One sees why the August Strindberg Society of Los Angeles would present “Lucky Per’s Journey.” In its American premiere, Strindberg’s socially conscious 1882 fairy tale abounds in current-event analogies.

After two mice devour the Christmas porridge left for the tomte (house spirit), the spiteful sprite curses idealistic Per (Michael Moon), who abandons his father for the treacherous world. Eventually, Per learns that riches do not ensure loyalty, that fighting injustice brings persecution and that politics trumps royalty and religion. In the restorative coda, he finally accepts humanity’s duality and the supremacy of selflessness.

Echoes of Voltaire’s “Candide” and Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” haunt this Scandinavian parable, and the climactic clash between Christianity and Islam is certainly topical. However, in approach and execution, this trek is less august event than strenuous workshop, its hearty participants notwithstanding.

Anne-Charlotte Harvey’s undoubtedly faithful, platitude-heavy translation hovers between subversive and sappy, directed by David Patch with mild classroom invention. Barring Andy Snavley’s evocative sound, tech is mainly rudimentary, with the by-committee costumes splashy accessories at best.

The charismatic Moon exudes Per’s intensity, but the foolishness eludes him, more Hamlet than Everyman. His eager fellows sporadically register in multiple roles. Stan Klimecko, Daniel Lench, Mark Rimer, Michael Durack and Sandy Johnson make the most consistent impressions. Eve Himmelheber channels Jo Van Fleet; Ed Sorrell’s understated father misses pathos; Danielle Taddei’s romantic waif needs vocal work, and so on.

Nevertheless, curious scholars and undemanding children can check out Per’s passage. To reach the general populace, his hapless trip needs the road map of a full-fledged production.

-- D.C.N.

“Lucky Per’s Journey,” Studio Stage Theatre, 520 N. Western Ave., Hollywood. 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Aug. 14. $15. (323) 769-5680. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.