Boston Globe REVIEW: Midwinter Revels heads far north for a tale inspired by a Gregory Maguire story

By Jeffrey Gantz for The Boston Globe. Updated December 17, 2025.

CAMBRIDGE — “To drive the dark away” has been a watchword of Revels’ annual midwinter/Christmas celebration, and it doesn’t get much darker than this year’s destination: Scandinavia. In that part of the world, at the winter solstice, there’s barely seven hours of daylight. Revels last visited the frozen north in 2018, when it offered an imaginative fusion of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and the Finnish epic compilation the “Kalevala.” That was the first Nordic “Christmas Revels” in 25 years, and at the time, I wrote that the company shouldn’t wait another 25 for a return visit. I’m happy to see that it didn’t. 

The inspiration for this “Scandinavian Story” is Gregory Maguire’s “Matchless.” In his reinvention of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl,” it’s Christmas Eve, and Andersen’s poor girl has matches that no one will buy. Meanwhile, the equally poor Frederik Pedersen is out of matches for his pot stove and can’t afford any, even though his widowed mother is seamstress to the Queen.

Jeremy C. Barnett’s ingeniously simple set is a staircase that diverges left and right to form two upper balconies. These can be the attic where Frederik creates a play village out of trash, or a ship from which nets of fish are let down via pulley, or the Heaven from which the Match Girl’s mother looks down on her daughter. Eliza Fichter narrates much of the first part of Maguire’s tale from one balcony. 

Frederik (David Keohane) and Dame Pedersen (Kristian Espiritu) live on an island; in order to get to the mainland, Frederik has to traverse a causeway that’s represented by wooden planks. As he scrounges for fish and trash treasure in the prosperous city, the Revels Omdansare, or Spinning Dancers, perform a lilting hambo to “Nu är det Jul igen” (“Now It Is Christmas Eve”), and then the Northern Lights Dancers create a showstopping daisy chain for the weaving song “Väva vadmal.” The Matchless Children act out “Räven raskar över isen” (“The Fox Is Running across the Ice”). When Frederik returns home, his mother sings the lullaby “Mitt hjerte alltid vanker” (“My Heart Always Wanders”). 

But the Queen has ripped her cloak again (“That woman can’t see a hem without stepping on it”) and has now sent a coach for Dame Pedersen, and Frederik ventures back to the city himself. After ageless master of ceremonies David Coffin illuminates the Swedish hymn “Gläns över sjö och strand” (“Shine over Sea and Shore”), we see the Match Girl (Fichter) lighting her matches and envisioning all sorts of Christmas treats (created in shadow on a rear curtain) before she freezes to death and her mother takes her up to Heaven. Frederik collects the Match Girl’s slipper, and on Christmas Day he and his mother find her grieving father (Joshua Wolf Coleman). The wedding march “Bruremarsj fra Vågå” celebrates the union of Dame Pedersen and the Match Girl’s father. What elevates this first half of “A Scandinavian Story” is the excellence of the acting and singing, the communal spirit of the dancing, and music director Elijah Botkin’s idiomatic arrangements. 

The second half brings more wedding festivities, highlighted by a Norwegian pols in which the couples put their individual stamp on the spinning. Then it’s the following Christmas, Dame Pedersen is sewing at the palace, and as Frederik’s on the causeway with her supper, ghostly Nordic herding calls ring out from every quarter, cueing the clever insertion of the traditional “Abbots Bromley Horn Dance.” 

When Frederik does make it to the palace, he finds a masked ball in full swing. The Baldur Band and the Cambridge Brass Ensemble rip through Hans Christian Lumbye’s rousing “Champagnegaloppen.” The homely hues of the first half give way to a riot of color; the guests include Sherlock Holmes and Napoleon. In “Tomtarnas Julnatt,” the Matchless Children imitate the good house trolls who pay a Christmas Eve visit and help themselves to porridge, ham, and bits of apple. Hans Christian Andersen (Keohane) arrives and narrates “The Emperor’s New Clothes” with the help of an audience volunteer, the children, and a variety of hilarious photo stand-ins. 

Frederik still has to get back across the causeway, which is now flooded, but a succession of flares held out by an invisible hand (here the hand of a visible Fichter) guides him home, where he shares the marzipan the Queen gave him and brings out his magically transformed play village. That leads to a messy, uproarious Mummers’ Play overseen by Odin (“They just don’t make gods like me anymore”) and featuring fellow god Loki, Danish king Valdemar IV, two Yule Goats, and the usual lovable Dragon.

After Valdemar has been resuscitated by mistletoe, the Yule Goat has got its hay, and the Pinewoods Morris Dancers have adapted a rowdy Border Morris to a traditional Swedish tune, we get the usual closers. This year, they include Susan Cooper’s poem “The Shortest Day,” and “The Sussex Mummers’ Carol,” and, to cap it, an ABBA surprise for the curtain calls. It all adds up to a “Midwinter Revels” that’s truly matchless. 

MIDWINTER REVELS: A SCANDINAVIAN STORY FOR CHRISTMAS 

Directed by Debra Wise. Music direction, Elijah Botkin. Set, Jeremy C. Barnett. Costumes, Heidi Hermiller. Lighting, Jeff Adelberg. Sound, Brian McCoy. Presented by Revels. At Sanders Theatre, Cambridge, through Dec. 28. $20-$105. 617-496-2222, www.revels.org Jeffrey Gantz can be reached at jeffreymgantz@gmail.com

Read this review on The Boston Globe website here