We’re in the busy theater season, so the following is the second installment of reviews of October shows at D.C.-area theaters. Want to know what else is playing? Check out our monthly theater preview.

Once on this Island
Review by Missy Frederick

Constellation Theatre Company is back after a long pandemic-era hiatus, and their production of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s Once On This Island is a festive, joyous return to form.

Basically a Caribbean take on “The Little Mermaid,” Once finds the vivacious Ti Moune (a captivating Kalen Robinson) on the cusp of adulthood, yearning for adventure. Her life is irrevocably changed when a wealthy stranger (Emmanuel Elliot Key) crashes his car nearby. Convinced they’re intertwined by fate, she nurses Daniel back to health and follows him back to his hotel palace, where their relationship becomes more complicated than her assumptions.

As any parent wary of giving Ariel too much influence over her daughter can attest, Once On This Island isn’t based on the most feminist tale; this adaptation swings more Hans Christian Andersen Sea Foam Ending tragedy than Disney romance. But Once doesn’t shy away from the fact that Daniel is, well, kind of a dick (his haunting, lullabye-like “Some Girls” ends with the devastating burn, “Some girls you marry/some you love”), though Key’s performance swings hammier than the rest of the production’s tone.

The rest of the cast gels wonderfully, with palpable energy, lively choreography with prominent African dance influences from Maurice Johnson, and beautiful staging, from the picturesque ivy-covered wrought iron stairs at the hotel to the use of flittering sheets and dramatic lighting to capture a storm.

Director Angelisa Gillyard follows in the footsteps of 2017’s well-received BIPOC-led Broadway revival, assembling a formidable Black cast that lends relevance and ownership. Edima Essien leads a raucous rendition of “Mama Will Provide;” Sydney Johnson’s melodic “The Human Heart” gets further enhanced by a pair of flirtatious interpretive dancers; Carl L. Williams is a gleefully menacing presence as the god of death Papa Ge. Once On This Island is a tragedy that feels more like a party as the cast merrily dances their way out the doors, invigorated after sharing their story of such a selfless heroine.

Once On This Island runs through Nov. 6 at Constellation; tickets are $20-55. The show is 90 minutes without an intermission.

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
Review by Nicole Hertvik

MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Mary Zimmerman lives up to the title with The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Zimmerman has returned to the work that established her reputation as a theatrical innovator when she wrote it decades ago to direct a sumptuous revival now playing at Shakespeare Theatre Company. Zimmerman’s sensual and poetic stagecraft combined with da Vinci’s words (The dialogue is taken verbatim from the voluminous notebooks da Vinci kept throughout his life), gives Notebooks all the splendor of a Renaissance painting come to life.

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci will remind you that da Vinci — one of history’s great polymaths — did much more than paint the Mona Lisa. In his notebooks, he philosophizes on subjects ranging from art to music, geometry, anatomy, fabric, sound, and even his dislike of fellow Renaissance man Michelangelo.

By turns, members of the ensemble cast deliver lines from da Vinci’s notebooks while other performers physicalize the words in scenes that are alternately moving, emotional, acrobatic, and comical. One demonstrates the rules of proportion by stringing the performers with taut golden threads. The final geometric image feels so transportive that the divisions between art, science, and math seem to melt away, articulating Renaissance ideals in a single breathtaking image. It’s just one scene of many that translate da Vinci’s mind into theatrical form, maybe the closest most of us will ever come to seeing the world as da Vinci saw it.

Each ensemble member is simply credited as playing “Leonardo,” and it is fitting that a man so unbound by convention should be embodied by performers of varying ages, genders, and ethnicities. There is a bit of Leonardo in all of us, the casting suggests, if we just open our eyes to the wonder of the universe around us. And the universe is a beautiful thing to see through the eyes of a genius… or two — audiences shouldn’t miss it.

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci runs at Shakespeare Theatre Company through Oct. 23. Tickets are $49-$125. Runtime 90 minutes with no intermission.