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Revels celebrates a mediæval English Christmas
BY JEFFREY GANTZ
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It’s the shortest day of the year in Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, in 1399, and as anyone who’s been there knows, the shortest day of the year in England is very short indeed. Little wonder that Christianity chose mid December to celebrate the birth of its redeemer, or that Christmas traditions developed with such hearty good cheer in the coldest and darkest latitudes. The 35th annual Christmas Revels returns us to those snowy days of yesteryear, with the lord of Haddon Hall throwing open the great oak doors not just to the neighboring nobles but to the peasants who work his lands and some visiting French minstrels and even a scattering of Knights Templar back from the Crusades. There’s no mention of their current political situation (ours is another matter), of the recent deposition of Richard II by Henry Bolingbroke, but the lord of the manor is in the new king’s good graces, to judge by the three stag’s heads that hang on what amounts to a theater wall, with curtained alcoves for entrances and exits. A hearth is emblazoned with the lord’s coat of arms, some wild animal rampant. At the sides of the stage stand 30-foot panels with almanac lunettes, one for winter, one for summer, both showing the manor folk hard at work. But this is a time for eating and drinking, for singing and dancing and storytelling. There are carols in English and French and Latin, sometimes all at once, accompanied by shawm and sackbut, harp and vielle. There are French estampies (one of which looks like a hora) and English morris dances; there are the usual children’s songs. The story comes from France: narrated by Debra Wise, Le roman de Fauvel is the tale of a well-treated but nonetheless dissatisfied donkey who courts Fortune and proves that an ass can rise to a position of power before the Wheel of Fortune (that’s right, the TV show, and later there are allusions to the Rolling Stones and, in an audience-participation section, Billy Rose’s "The Stripper") turns and he winds up hitched to Dame Vainglory. Fauvel and Dame V return for the traditional St. George (no allusions whatsoever to our president) and the Dragon mummers’ play, but Fauvel, promised the starring role (which in fact goes to one of the Templar knights) by Dame V, grumps about playing the ’Obby ’Oss till he perceives he can save the day by bearing in the Doctor (Debra Wise) to resuscitate the downed St. George. When the Doctor, who’s dressed like a matador but appears to have flunked out of bullfighting school, proves as inept as ever, Fauvel calls on his old girlfriend Fortune, who spins her wheel and brings St. George back to life. Revels riffs on religion as well as politics with dizzying facility: Fauvel recalls the donkey at the stable and the one who carries Jesus into Jerusalem, and the star the Pinewoods Morris Men form with their sword dance is a six-pointed one. Darkest day, brightest artistic light. CHRISTMAS REVELS | Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre, Memorial Hall, 45 Quincy St, Cambridge | Through December 30 | $20-$42; $12-$32 children | 617.496.2222 or http://www.revels.org/.
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