Stage and Cinema REVIEW: You’d Be a Fool to Miss this Feast of Fun

By Lynne Weiss. Updated December 18, 2023

The long-playing Midwinter Revels (founded as Christmas Revels in 1971) is a unique mix of professional performance, volunteer talent, and audience participation that has created a joyous community that comes together each holiday season to delight in forms of music and dance that span the centuries as well as the globe.

Across 34 years as artistic director of the Revels, Patrick Swanson has taken audiences from every corner of Europe to North America, from medieval times to the 20th century, in an exploration of the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth that are celebrated around the winter solstice. This year’s The Feast of Fools – A Medieval Celebration of the Solstice is no exception. Co-directed by retiring Patrick Swanson and incoming Debra Wise, with music direction by Elijah Botkin, the event features stellar performances by René Collins (Folly the Fool), Barbara Allen Hill (soloist), Vincent Ernest Siders (King), and Laurel Swift (Death) as well as a terrific brass section with Tom Duprey and Greg Gettel on trumpets and Philip Swanson on trombone. Singer and music educator David Coffin’s powerful yet warm baritone pulls everything together from the moment he steps onto the stage and teaches the audience its parts, making the instruction utterly enjoyable and an essential ingredient of the performance.

The Revels events are a celebration of traditions. While there are always newcomers in the audience, the vast majority of those in attendance have attended year after year, some for decades. Each year’s production brings variations. Nonetheless, many elements, such as the singing (with audience participation) of Dona Nobis Pacem, Lord of the Dance, and the Sussex Mummers Carol. A large chorus of volunteers, including a sizeable group of children, audition for their parts each year and are essential to every performance.

Feast of Fools is set in a mythical community that might be based in northern Europe and Britain and portrays documented rituals for observing the winter solstice. While the program states that the action is meant to take place in the late Medieval/early Renaissance eras, some of the rituals, such as the beautiful and mysterious Horn Dance (Pinewoods Morris Men) likely date from pre-Christian times. The same is true for the evocation of light through the Yule Log, candles, and other means of bringing light into a community during the long nights of the solstice season. Heidi Hermiller’s sumptuous costumes and impressive puppetry add to this year’s delights; the beauty of swirling capes and skirts is enhanced by Susan Dibble’s choreography.

The Feast of Fools theme stems from the tradition of court jesters who provided comic performers and at times, bold social and political commentary not permitted by ordinary subjects to the King. You can’t necessarily find a coherent story line in all this, nor should you—plot is not the point of a Revels performance: it’s about tradition and community and spectacle and the sanctity of natural cycles with a soupcon of education about bygone times and faraway places. In short, it offers an evening (or an afternoon) of comfort, delight, and holiday cheer.

Photos by Paul Buckley.

Midwinter Revels: The Feast of Fools – A Medieval Celebration of the Solstice
Sanders Theater, Harvard University, Cambridge MA
live performances through December 28, 2023
for tickets, call 617.496.2222 visit Revels
also available streaming December 25, 2023 to January 7, 2024

Read this interview on Stage and Cinema here