Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's 1998 Tony Award-winning score for Ragtime (book by Terrence McNally) has many virtues"strong songs, strong characters, moments of great drama"but for my money, it cannot hold a candle to Ahrens and Flaherty's earlier, less complicated, but no less ambitious musical, Once on this Island. First produced on Broadway in 1990, […] The post <i>Once on This Island</i> illustr…
