Tag: Holidays

Performing Arts Review: Midwinter Revels: A Scandinavian Story for Christmas

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Midwinter Revels: A Scandinavian Story for Christmas

 

Inspired by Gregory Maguire’s Matchless
Directed by Debra Wise
Music Director – Elijah Botkin

December 12, 2025: Sanders Theater at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cast

David Coffin – Master of Ceremonies
David Keohane – Frederik Pedersen, Hans Christian Andersen
Kristian Espiritu – Dame Pedersen, The Queen
Joshua Wolf Coleman – Father, Coachman, Major Domo
Eliza Fichter – Match Girl
The Strålande Chorus
The Northern Lights Dancers
The Matchless Children
Baldur Band
Cambridge Brass Ensemble
The Pinewoods Morris Men

The holidays begin for real on opening night of the Midwinter Revels.  This year’s show engages with the culture and traditions of Scandinavia which means yule goats, St. Lucia in a crown of candles, hambo dance, Hans Christian Andersen, Norse gods, and perhaps some ABBA.  The story that ties everything together is adapted from the short story “Matchless” by the Revels chorus alumnus Gregory Maguire.  This is excellent timing by the Revels since Maguire is at peak cultural relevance at the moment.

The “Matchless” story is built on a minor character who appears in Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl,” a boy named Frederik.  His story is expanded to make him a day dreamer who collects odd objects while living with his mother, the seamstress for the Queen.  The tragic Match Girl’s story is also performed, but she lives on as a narrator/Greek chorus for the entire show.  And if that doesn’t make sense, it’s Revels, just roll with it.

Highlights of the show included the many Scandinavian folk dances, including a brilliant one where a line of dancers holding hands kept tying themselves into knots and then emerging triumphant.  I also enjoyed when the fiddler Laura Hummel lead a procession of sopranos and altos through the audience.  The Revels tradition “Abbots Bromley Horn Dance” is not in its customary spot opening Act II, but instead is worked into Frederik’s story.  Master of Ceremonies David Coffin kept the audience involved in sing-a-longs and getting people up and dancing in the aisles.  The costumes are wonderful and I’ve never seen the chorus go through so many changes before, including donning fancy dress for a bowl at the Queen’s palace.

Midwinter Revels continues at Sanders Theatre through December 28, and it wouldn’t be solstice/Christmas without it!

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Performing Arts Review: Midwinter Revels: The Selkie and the Seal Woman

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Midwinter Revels: The Selkie and the Seal Woman

December 13, 2024 at 7pm
Sanders Theatre, Cambridge, MA

Since 2001, the Revels have been a part of my annual holiday traditions most every year. I took in the opening night performance of the show (I’ll be back for the solstice performance) and once again felt the warm embrace of song, dance, storytelling, cultural exchange, and community.  Each year the Revels explores the winter holiday traditions of a particular place and time, or as increasingly common in recent years, multiple cultures coming together in the same place.  This year the place is a fictional village on Ireland’s Atlantic coast and the time is December 22, 1999 when the solstice coincided with a full moon (and yes, I do feel aged now that 1999 is a historical time period).

Villagers are gathering in the local pub, The Selkie Girl, for holiday celebrations when a newcomer arrives.  Maritza (Kortney Adams), a marine biologist from Massachusetts is a new researcher at the town’s marine science institute, arrives with her son Amilcar (Cedric Appolon) to pick up a package.  Joining the celebration, Maritza discusses the feeling of longing for her ancestral homeland of Cabo Verde with the publican Siobhan (Mary Casey) and the pub’s resident Poet (Aidan Parkinson). Candida Rose Baptista serves as the tradition bearer for the songs and dance of Cabo Verde, and she is stunning. Together they all learn of similarities among the two island nations, and share contrasting tales of a seal that can turn into a woman (a selkie in Irish folklore).

The show brings together songs from Irish, Cabo Verdean, and New England folk traditions, almost seamlessly.  There’s even a singalong of “Silent Night” in Irish, Kriolu, and English.  Highlights of the show are “Mo Ghile Mear,” “So Sabi,” “The Gartan Mother’s Lullaby,” and “Fitiço Di Funana.” Revels tradition from every show include dancing out to the lobby at the end of the Act I to “Lord of the Dance,” a mummer’s play, the round “Dona Nobis Pacem,” and “Sussex Mummer’s Carol” as the finale.  There is no “Abbots Bromley Horn Dance” in this show (too English), but the 19th-century Irish mummers dance “Lone Shanakyle” is a fine replacement.

The Midwinter Revels continues in performances at Sanders Theatre until December 28, and I highly recommend seeing it if you can!  You can even watch it virtually from your home from December 28 to January 12.

Below is a list of all my reviews of previous Revels shows.  I was in the cast in 2021 and 2020, so it’s no surprise I was too busy to write about those shows, but I do feel bad that I apparently neglected to review last year’s show which was also excellent.

Holiday Movie Marathon: Elf (2003)

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Title: Elf
Release Date: November 7, 2003
Director: Jon Favreau
Production Company: New Line Cinema | Guy Walks Into a Bar Productions
Summary/Review:

I guess I’m a little bit of a Grinch, because I finally watched this “beloved Holiday classic” for the first time and it didn’t resonate with me at all. There’s not even really anything that I can find to criticize about it, I just found it to be almost funny without every really being funny. Will Ferrell does a great job as Buddy, an elf at Santa’s a workshop, who discovers that he was really an orphaned human and goes off to New York City to find his biological father, Walter Hobbs (James Caan).

I can appreciate Ferrell’s performance as a wonderous child in an adult body. I also like that this movie avoids cynicism and really commits to the belief in the Christmas spirit. But maybe because of these things there’s also no real conflict and everyone just seems easily won over by Buddy. I don’t know, I hate to poopoo on everyone’s favorite holiday movie, but this one wasn’t for me.

Rating: **

Holiday Movie Marathon: The City of Lost Children (1995)

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Title: The City of Lost Children
Release Date: May 17, 1995
Director: Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Production Company: Canal+ | Centre National de la Cinématographie | Eurimages | France 3 Cinéma | Televisión Española
Summary/Review:

The Brattle Theatre podcast stated that The City of Lost Children is a Christmas movie, so I’m going to run with it since I’ve been meaning to rewatch this classic for some time.  The makers of another classic, Delicatessen, created this visually-stunning, creepy yet heartfelt story about chosen family and hope in dire times. The setting is a gritty port city (kind of a dystopian version of Sweet Haven from Robert Altman’s Popeye) populated by sideshow performers, a criminal gang of  orphans run by malicious conjoined twins, and a religious cult of Cyclops who kidnap children.

Many of these children are delivered to an evil scientist Krank (Daniel Emilfork) on an oil rog who is stealing their dreams because he can’t dream himself. Working with Krank are a half-dozen clones (all played by Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon), a dwarf named Marth (Mireille Mossé), and a brain in a fish tank named Uncle Irvin (Jean-Louis Trintignant). This all really begins to make sense over time as details are revealed. In retrospect, I wonder how much this movie influenced the tv adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Into this milieu enters the strongman One (a brilliant performance by Ron Perlman) whose world is turned upside down after his carnival manager is stabbed and his little brother, Denree (Joseph Lucien), is abducted. He aligns with a member of the orphan gang, Miette (Judith Vittet), to track down his little brother. The bond formed between One and Miette is what makes this film great, and I’m very impressed by the 10-year-old Vittet’s acting chops.  I looked at her IMBD page expecting her to be in lots of great movies as an adult, but alas her acting career was very short (although she does work in costuming for French tv series). 

This movie is absolutely brilliant but it has to be seen to be believed. Oh, and the Krank dream sequences contain imagery of many creepy Santa Clauses, so there is your Christmas content.  The themes of hope and family, though, make it even more relevant to the holiday. 

Rating: *****

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0HWDOzi2h0
 
 

Holiday Movie Marathon: Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

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Title: Christmas in Connecticut
Release Date: August 11, 1945
Director: Peter Godfrey
Production Company: Warner Bros.
Summary/Review:

The movie begins with the travails of WWII sailor Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) who survives 18 days in a life raft and a long recovery in the hospital back home. He becomes obsessed with food and particularly the columns of Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck), a mother who writes about cooking and domestic life from her farm in Connecticut. The earnest publisher of her magazine, Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet) learns that Jones is a fan of Lane, and comes up with a publicity stunt of having the war hero spend Christmas at her farm.

There’s only one problem: Elizabeth is a single “career gal” who lives in New York City and knows nothing about cooking. Luckily, Elizabeth’s long-time suitor John Sloan (Reginald Gardiner) is an architect with an actual farmhouse in Connecticut and is willing to pose at Elizabeth’s husband (and ultimately marry her for real). Elizabeth’s friend Felix Bassenak (S.Z. Sakall) is a restaurateur who agrees to come along and do the cooking. All of this takes way to long to set up in the movie (as it takes too much space for me to summarize) but once all the pieces are set in place, the movie really shines.

When Elizabeth and Jefferson finally meet, it’s love at first site. There are a lot of comic hijinks of Elizabeth trying to keep up with the imagined life of her column, especially for Yardley’s benefit. But the movie is also surprisingly progressive as we learn that Jefferson is actually far more domestic than Elizabeth. This is especially true in a scene where he expertly bathes Elizabeth’s borrowed baby when she has no clue. The babies themselves are in fact left in the care of Sloan’s housekeeper by immigrant women working in war factories. The war has turned traditional gender roles upside down and this movie seems to be saying that they don’t need to go back to them. Stanwyck’s performance is particularly brilliant and she delivers lines that clearly indicate that she’s had it with societal expectations even as she’s forced to go along with them. (For more on the subversive elements of this movie see this recent article from the AV Club).

The slow start to this movie could use some judicious editing, and there are some subplots I’ve left out of my summary that aren’t too interesting, but overall, once this movie gets to Connecticut it’s a great rom-com. By the way, despite the movie taking place over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, it is not a particularly Christmas-y movie. Also, in an odd bit of trivia, this movie was remade in the 1990s as a tv movie directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger! I’m not going to watch that one.

Rating: ****

Holiday Movie Marathon: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966)

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Title: How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
Release Date: December 18, 1966
Director: Chuck Jones | Ben Washam
Production Company: Cat in the Hat Productions | MGM Animation/Visual Arts
Summary/Review:

With all the remakes and the ever-growing Grinch Industrial Complex, it’s easy to forget how short and simple this original adaption of the Dr. Seuss’ book is. It does bring together some remarkable talent, including legendary cartoon director Chuck Jones. The animation is noticeably superior to A Charlie Brown Christmas of a year earlier. It also features the voice talents of Boris Karloff as the narrator and June Foray as Cindy Lou Who. And the golden voice of the awesomely-named Thurl Ravenscroft sings the original diss track, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” The Grinch of course is relatable to anyone who gets a bit grumpy about the commercialism and trappings of Christmas, so this show holds up well.

Rating: ****

Holiday Movie Marathon: Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas (1977)

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Title: Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas
Release Date: December 4, 1977
Director: Jim Henson
Production Company: Henson Associates
Summary/Review:

I’d heard about Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas when I was a child, but somehow I never caught it on tv and later in life I just couldn’t find. Being a lover of otters and Jim Henson, I’m glad that I finally was able to watch it this year. Henson and his associates created a charming Appalachian village populated with several down-home animals including the titular Emmet (Jerry Nelson) and his mother, Alice (Marilyn Sokol). In this “Gift of the Magi” inspired story, Emmet and Alice each hope to win the prize in a talent show so they can get one another the perfect gift. Emmet pokes a hole in his mother’s washtub to start the jug band, while Alice pawns Emmet’s tools to get fine clothing for her singing performance. It’s a sweet story with great music and fantastic set design and puppetry tricks that still hold up. I’m so glad I finally got to see this!

Rating: ****

Holiday Movie Marathon: A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

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Title: A Charlie Brown Christmas
Release Date: December 9, 1965
Director: Bill Melendez
Production Company: Lee Mendelson Films
Summary/Review:

It’s not the nostalgia talking, this show is really just great. This groundbreaking tv special deals with seasonal depression, crass consumerism, and even made aluminum Christmas trees go out of style. Add to that a banging jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi. And it does all this in a story about kids putting on a Christmas play in limited animation by the Graphic Blandishment team.

Rating: *****

Holiday Movie Marathon: Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas (1999)

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Merry Christmas! Today I will be posting my reviews of my binge-watch of holiday movies. Enjoy!

Title: Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas
Release Date: November 9, 1999
Director: Alex Mann, Bradley Raymond, Jun Falkenstein, Bill Speers, & Toby Shelton
Production Company: Walt Disney Television Animation | Disney Video Premiere
Summary/Review:

This anthology film is made up of three shorts staring the Disney Fab Five. The first segment (and the best) has Huey, Dewey and Louie wishing every day would be Christmas and finding that the day is less special when it’s repeated Groundhog’s Day style. Next, Goofy tries to make a perfect Christmas for his son Max, who begins doubting the existence of Santa Claus. Finally, Mickey and Minnie create a modern interpretation of “The Gift of the Magi.” It’s a good holiday film to watch with young children although it’s not anything special.

Rating: **1/2

Holiday Movie Marathon: The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special (2020)

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Merry Christmas! Today I will be posting my reviews of my binge-watch of holiday movies. Enjoy!

Title: The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special
Release Date: November 17, 2020
Director: Ken Cunningham
Production Company: Atomic Cartoons | Lucasfilm |The LEGO Group
Summary/Review:

This animated, LEGO-fied Disney + special is a funny take on the Star Wars universe, holidays specials, and the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special of 1977. Set after Rise of Skywalker, Poe is eager to celebrate Life Day with the Wookiees on Kashyyyk, while Rey looks for some wisdom to make her better at training Finn to use the force. Her journey leads her to find an Jedi artifact that opens portals through time so she can travel through time and witness Jedi masters training their apprentices. Things go wrong and soon characters from throughout the Star Wars timeline are mingled together, leading to some great gags such as Kylo Ren meeting his hero Darth Vader and the Emperor, and three different versions of Obi-Wan Kenonbi greeting one another with “Hello there!” It’s a good laugh for Star Wars fans who have a sense of humor.


Rating: ***