Go Early and See It With Someone You Love
By Skip Sheffield
Go to “Once” early and mingle with the cast onstage. The exuberant
Irish musical continues through Oct. 18 at Broward Center for the Arts.
An Irish pub is the setting for “Rush,” so a working bar is
set up onstage, where the audience is invited to belly up to the bar and
perhaps sing along with the musicians.
“Once” began as a 2007 low-budget musical film set in
Dublin, Ireland. Glen Hansard played an itinerant street musician whose day job
was working with his dad repairing Vacuum cleaners. One day a Czech immigrant flower
girl (Marketa Irglova) heard ‘The Guy” (he is not given a name) play. In order
to get to know him better, she asks for him to fix her Hoover vacuum cleaner.
So begins a mutual attraction that blossoms into love. The songs that were in
the movie and the subsequent Broadway show that won eight 2012 Tony Awards,
including Best Musical, were written by Hansard and Irglova.
The national touring production that is visiting Broward
Center stars British actors Stuart Ward as “The Guy” and Dani de Waal as “The Girl.” A multi-national supporting cast sings and plays various instruments. This makes the show
uniquely organic, as if it were being made up on the spot. There are two female
fiddlers (Erica Spyres and Claire Wellin)
and additional musicians doubling on various instruments including
piano, guitar, banjo, accordion, concertina, mandolin, ukulele, electric bass
and percussion. Stuart Ward plays guitar and Dani de Waal plays piano and they
harmonize beautifully on the score’s best song, “Falling Slowly.”
“Once” is a musician’s delight, and its book, by Irish
playwright Enda Walsh, is a romantic parable that appeals to anyone who has ever
been in love or has loved and lost. That pretty much is all of us, which
explains the universal appeal of “Once.”
Tickets are $35-$125 at TicketMaster. Call 800-745-3000 or
954-462-0222.
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