It would not be Christmas without the Christmas Revels at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge. This year my wife, son and I joined by our friends Abby, Kim, & Sid took in the Winter Solstice performance on the evening of December 21st. The show was delightful as always with the subject being near and dear to my heart, the music of Irish emigrants as they sail the new world.
The show was a more restrained and simple performance than a typical Revels keeping to the theme of the cast being impoverished immigrants aboard a ship and not having much to celebrate with. After the opening number, lines and gangways were removed from the sides of the stage and notably no cast members went down the steps into “the ocean” except during a storytelling sequence. These restraints did nothing to detract from the beauty of the song, dance, and stories performed.
Highlights of the show for me included:
Bill Meleady’s colorful telling of The Soul Cages, the exception to the restraint on the performance where the visuals of the story come to life in vivid detail. I enjoyed the dancing crustaceans especially as well as Steve Barkhimer’s portrayal of the merrow Coomara.
“The Wexford Lullaby” gorgeously performed by Mary Casey along with Jamie Jaffe as a duet and later as a quartet.
The dramatic “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” swelling as the audience joins the chorus.
“The Lord of the Dance” is always a highlight and was cleverly worked into the show as being the English ship crews’ contribution to the shipboard celebration.
The show had several sets of traditional Irish music by The Rattling Brogues and step dance by O’Shea-Chaplin Academy of Irish Dance that livened up the proceedings greatly.
If there was one minor disappointment is that the show ends with the immigrants seeing The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. The show is set aboard the Cunard steamship RMS Carpathia and since Cunard had a western terminus in Boston (there’s still an office building marked “CUNARD” on State Street) it would have been a nice local connection to have the ship dock here instead of New York.
A traditional element of the Revels – “The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance” – was not included in the program but as this was the Winter Solstice, the audience was treated to a special rendition of Abbots Bromley after the curtain call. I’d actually guessed that Abbots Bromley was the surprise we’d been promised before the show, but it was still a thrill when the first haunting notes of the recorder came out and the audience reacted with joy.
This was another great Revels and I believe all the shows were sold out. If you missed this year’s Revels, make sure to get your tickets early for next year’s show which I promise will be just as great.
Beer: Cambridge Amber Brewer: Cambridge Brewing Company Source: Draft Rating: *** (7.0 of 10) Comments: This beer features a dark copper/brown color with a thin head. The scent is faint and grainy while the taste is nutty and yeasty with a clean finish. Sporadic lacing covers the inside of the glass. This is an enjoyable local brew.
Beer:Sgt. Pepper Saison / Farmhouse Ale Brewer: Cambridge Brewing Co. Source: 22 oz. bottles Rating: *** (7.8 of 10) Comments: The beer is a nice cloudy copper with lots of bubbles and a foamy head. The smell and taste stand out as the peppercorns give the beer a spiciness that is unique. It also has fruity, citrus flavors and a pleasantly spicy aftertaste. It’s good to have something different.
This afternoon my family and I took in the annual performance of The Christmas Revels at Sanders Theater in Cambridge. The Revels is a family tradition and this marks the tenth Christmas Revels production I’ve attended (including a Washington Revels performance in 1995 and performing as a cast member in the 2009 Christmas Revels). This was also my four-year-old son’s second Christmas Revels and my five-week-old daughter’s first Revels ever. Peter showed exemplary behavior and was deeply engaged by the performance while Kay amazed me by actually appearing to watch the show at times when she wasn’t feeding or napping.
The Revels impress me each year by crafting a show around a theme with consistent narrative that logically incorporates music and dance from various traditions. This year’s production is set in a French fishing village on the Mediterranean that is hosting an annual feast that draws pilgrims from near and wide. Thus we are able to enjoy traditional music from France and other parts of Europe as well as traveling performers from the East playing Arabic music. The Sharq Trio steal the show with sets in both acts of Arabic singing, dance and percussion. The trio seemed to mesmerize my infant daughter at the very least. Salome Sandoval also lends her stunning voice as a soloist.
The center of the performance is three members of the Guild of Fools – Soleil (Timothy Sawyer), Etoile (Sabrina Selma Mandell), and Eclaire de Lune (Mark Jaster) – performing the annual pageant. Amid the music and revelry there is the lurking presence of the skeletal Boney (Linnea Coffin) who seems to be just out of sight of the villagers on stage, but very frightening to at least one four-year-old boy in the audience. At a key moment in the first act, Boney and her skeleton crew seize the light from the world plunging the holiday performance into darkness. The fools thus are given the quest of finding their namesake light sources – the moon, the stars, and the sun – which they do with plenty of song and dance and a nativity play along the way. The Revels crew deserve a lot of credit for the stage design featuring multiple layers of scaffolding for the performers and a Ship of Fools upon which the featured trio sail to fish for the reflection of the moon. The costuming is also brilliant, especially Soleil, Etoile, and Eclaire de Lune’s outfits for the concluding mummer’s play. And the makeup helped make Boney and the other skeletons the scariest things I’ve ever seen in a Revels’ production.
The final performance is Thursday December 29th at 1 pm, so get tickets and go see the show if you can. If you’re reading this after the fact, make sure to check out The Revels’ website for future events.
Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I’m a big fan of Revels and their annual Christmas Revels performances at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge. I was excited and honored to attend the dress rehearsal performance of this year’s 40th anniversary production of the Christmas Revels on Thursday, December 16th. Had I better journalistic standards I would have used this scoop to get my review up before the show opened on Friday night, but at least at this point there are still eleven more shows to go.
This year’s Christmas Revels returns to a familiar setting, Haddon Hall, an English manor house that was the scene of the first and many subsequent Revels performances. This time the show is set in the 1920s and the 10th Duke of Rutland with his wife and children are making one last visit to the long abandoned house before it is demolished to make way for a motorway. I never before realized that Haddon Hall is a real place and the characters in these Revels are based upon real people who in fact saved and renovated Haddon Hall in the 1920s. The story told in the Revels performance of course is a beautiful fiction but one that contains deeper moral truths about family, ritual, and place.
In the performance, the spirits of the Duke of Rutland’s ancestors emerge from the walls to celebrate the solstice. This gives the chorus and instrumentalists the very enjoyable opportunity to perform music and stories from various eras – medieval, Renaissance, and Victorian – a Revels’ clip-show of sorts. While building on the historic traditions of England, the show also builds on Revels traditions of the past 40 years. Sanders Theatre is very much our Haddon Hall for the families and friends of the Revels who come each year.
I’ll try not to give too much away, but here are some of the highlights of the show (don’t read if you want to be completely surprised):
The emergence of the spirits in white shrouds to the “Cries of London” is eerie and creepy in a beautiful way. When the chorus makes it on stage and remove the shrouds so that there costumes are visible for the first time is a big wow moment for me.
The children’s chorus is excellent as always and seem to be more integrated into performing with the adult chorus, especially on the lovely piece “On Christmas Night.”
All the actors put in a great performance, particularly Tim Sawyer as the Duke and Emma Jaster as a mute jester.
Harriet Bridges plays the Duchess and also provides a soaring soprano for pieces like “Down in Yon Forest.”
The traditional mummers play of St. George in the Dragon is always entertaining and the brand new dragon (part costume/part puppetry) really steals the show.
A sing-a-long of “Let’s All Go Down the Strand” is joyful and exuberant, and as David Coffin noted they really do make it fit into the show.
The real showstopper for me is the chorus’ performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s “There Shall A Star From Jacob Come Forth.” The intertwining of voices and the Cambridge Symphonic Brass Ensemble is breathtaking.
I’ll be returning to Sanders Theatre on December 26th to catch a Revels’ matinée with my wife, son, and mother. In the meantime, if you live anywhere near Cambridge and want to celebrate the holidays, go see this show!
I took the debut cruise yesterday morning on a beautiful late summer day and got enjoy a relaxing cruise and learn a lot about buildings and history along the river. The cruise will be offered on Saturdays and Sundays at 10 am through October 17th (yours truly will be narrating on Columbus Day Weekend). Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for members of Boston By Foot. Come on out and sail with Boston By Foot!
The slideshow below offers some highlights of what you can see from the boat. No captions, you’ll have to come on the cruise to learn about what you see in these photographs.
I promote a lot of tours on this blog, but if there’s one tour you must take this summer it’s the Exploring the Charles River Basin tour offered by Boston By Foot guides (including myself). The tour steps off at 2 pm on Sunday, June 27th from Nashua Street Park just opposite the exit from the Science Park MBTA station (exit to the right, not toward the Museum of Science). Admission for this tour is $15/person and $5 for card-carrying members of Boston By Foot. A great excuse for getting a membership now!
Not to frighten anyone off but this tour covers about two-miles of some-times rough ground with little protection from the elements. So come prepared with appropriate clothing and fresh liquids. The tour lasts approximately 2 hours but you can duck out pretty easily at the 90-minute mark if you need to.
While Exploring the Charles River Basin, you will:
discover three brand-new parks that most people don’t know exist.
history of the Charles River and its ever-encroaching banks
hear mellifluous words like bascule, freshet, and sluiceway and find out what they mean too
cross not one but two dams
see the only city jail with a waterfront view and a park across the street
ponder our litigious society
find what remains of Miller’s River
get a new perspective on the world’s widest cable-stayed bridge
and without fail you’ll see all manner of transportation, roads, railways, bridges, and waterways
Lahiri’s collection of short stories demonstrates that she is one fine writer. The stories – mainly set in the Cambridge/Boston area or in India – cover some common themes such as the meetings of peoples of different cultures, strained relationships, and children with a growing understanding of the adult world. The last theme is best demonstrated in “When Mr. Pirzada Came To Dine” told through a child’s perspective of her parents’ Pakistani dinner guest and how that leads to her coming to terms with sociopolitical realities. The first story “A Temporary Matter” ends on an act of cruelty that is a real kick in the gut. Indeed, many of these stories demonstrate the downside of human nature and so the reader shouldn’t read this for a pick-me-up. Yet there is unexpected joy as well as in the last story “The Third and Final Continent” about an Indian immigrant and the elderly woman who rents him a room which has a surprisingly upbeat ending.
In Central Square, Cambridge an angry snowman demands that you keep your sidewalks clear of snow.
I’ve actually noticed that the sidewalks in Central Square & Cambridgeport tend to be better maintained than other places in and around Boston. So this vindictive anthropomorphic mass of crystallized precipitation is doing his job. Respect his authority!
As reported earlier, I’m participating as a member of the Roaring Gap Chorus in this year’s Christmas Revels at Sanders Theater in Cambridge, MA. The show has been great thus far and tickets are still available for the final six performances. Come out and see us and don’t just take my word for it, read these lovely reviews from:
elledark: Memorial Day. Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May. Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. men and women who have died in the military service. It originally honored soldiers of the American Civil War (it is celebrated near the day of reunification after the Civil War) but was expanded a […]
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