Happenstance Theater’s Mark Jaster and Sabrina Selma Mandell are featured in a scene from Christmas Revels, now playing at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre. Roger Ide photo
What delivers more fast-paced, giddy fun than a ride in a one-horse open sleigh? The 44th edition of The Christmas Revels!
This “Victorian Celebration of the Winter Solstice” has helped itself so liberally to British music hall shenanigans and the compositions of Sir Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame that you may find yourself momentarily pausing to consider, “Is Christmas supposed to be quite so rollicking?”
The Christmas Revels have always been all about audience participation, with round-singing to music and lyrics in the program book and the intermission hand-in-hand skip-along to “The Lord of the Dance.” Revels Artistic Director Paddy Swanson, a seasoned London actor and director, knows very well whence this “don’t just sit there quietly in your seats” brand of theater-going comes and he peppers the show with never-fail gags from Old Britannia.
This all-new show with its 80-member cast is built around a Christmas “panto.”
Pantos, which have nothing to do with anyone with the surname Marceau, are musical “fractured fairy tales,” of the sort once purveyed by Rocky and Bullwinkle. Double-entendres, men dressed as women and vice versa, hissing, cheering, and audiences shouting unheeded warnings are all part of the corny concoction. The prevailing pert sense of humor is indicated by the subtitle of this particular spoof, “Cinderella, or A Woman’s Right to Shoes.”
This still popular holiday tradition, which evolved from Italian commedia dell’arte, came to the British stage in 1717, and ever since, the panto has been a family favorite outing during “the Golden Week” between Christmas and New Year’s.
Swanson’s ribbon-thin first act plot imagines Sir Arthur Sullivan and his secret mistress helping a producer friend when a royal command performance of the ballet of “Cinderella” falls apart because of the Russian flu. With trepidation they cobble together a “Cinderella” panto with the aid of some cheeky street buskers. Act Two, set at the storied Crystal Palace, is pretty much the slapstick panto and a salute to beloved, toe-tapping music hall chestnuts like “Down at the Old Bull and Bush” and “Don’t Dilly Dally on the Way.”
Rendering these ditties with equal measures of sauciness and panache is Sarah deLima, who triumphed in a previous Victorian Revels as a “igh class” songstress.
The irrepressible Irishman Billy Meleady once again proves his comedic chops whether leading a chorus of chimney sweeps or blithely busting the fourth wall of the aforesaid panto.
Happenstance Theater’s Mark Jaster and Sabrina Selma Mandell keep things from seeming too familiar by playing the saw and performing the novelty act “Vlad and Olga: Turks with Teeth of Steel.”
Amid all this gaslight gallimaufry, Music Director George Emlen keeps the show classy (or at least classical) by here and there featuring his multi-part “Royal Albert Chorus” in quaint carols and soaring selections from oratorios.
If Father Christmas somehow forgets to leave you tickets for this dizzy delight, you can book yourself seats at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre through Dec. Visit revels.org.
