Boston Globe PREVIEW: This year’s ‘Midwinter Revels’ blends two Mass. immigrant heritages

By Terry Byrne, Globe correspondent. Updated December 12, 2024.

“The Revels,” says director Debra Wise, “is the ultimate collage.”

This year’s 54th production, “The Selkie Girl and the Seal Woman” is the result of months of listening, learning, collecting, and curating, culminating in a gathering of nearly 60 singers, musicians, dancers, and actors on the stage of Sanders Theatre in Cambridge to celebrate the winter solstice.

Each “Midwinter Revels” gathers stories and songs that highlight and connect cultures and traditions of the season from around the globe. This year’s theme combines both Irish and Cabo Verdean traditions — two cultures, Wise says, that share more than you might think.

“They are both island cultures and experienced a wave of immigration to the United States as a result of famine,” she says. “Many settled in Massachusetts, contributing to the fishing, whaling, and cranberry industries, and they both express their culture through music and dance.”

“The Selkie Girl and the Seal Woman” opens in a pub in a small fishing village in Ireland where the community has come together for a holiday celebration. When a child enters looking for a package for his mother, it turns out his mother is from a coastal town in Cabo Verde. The community learns about the connections and contrasts between the two cultures by sharing songs and dances — Irish jigs and reels as well as Cabo Verdean drumming and song.

“The tradition of the Revels is that the curation of the music and the narrative is a community effort,” says music director Elijah Botkin. “The connections we make are one of the coolest things about the Revels and often appear when we weren’t even looking for them.”

This year’s creative process included attending the 52nd annual Cape Verdean Recognition Parade & Kultura Festa in New Bedford last summer.

“We go into this process not being the experts,” Botkin says. “One of the joys of working on this show is discovering these commonalities. I like to compare it to getting on a ship. You may think you are going from point A to point B, but really, if you keep going, you are traveling in a circle around the globe.”

This year’s ensemble includes Cedric Appolon, the 10-year-old son of Jean Appolon, who leads the respected Haitian dance troupe Jean Appolon Expressions, and Aidan Parkinson, an award-winning Irish playwright and actor, along with actor Kortney Adams, dancers Athéna-Gwendolyn Baptiste and Rebecca McGowan, and singer Mary Casey.

The bulk of Botkin’s responsibilities revolve around arranging the music for the songs.

“We work collaboratively to decide what sounds we want to create,” he says. “We also have uniquely talented musicians participating, and I never start arranging music until I have all my players.”

This year’s instruments include uilleann pipes, concertina, fiddle, bodhran, cavaquinho, batuku, ferrinho, and bouzouki, as well as the tuba, trumpets, and trombones that are part of the five-piece Cambridge Brass Ensemble.

David Coffin, the Revels’ longtime master of ceremonies, helps to weave the stories and songs together, including inviting the audience to sing along with some sea chanteys, as well as such Revels favorites as “Lord of the Dance,” “Silent Night,” and “Dona Nobis Pacem.” This year, he is aided by Candida Rose Baptista, a New Bedford native, musician, and educator steeped in her Cabo Verdean musical heritage, who teaches the audience some words in “Creolu,” so they can join on those songs, too.

“When we started digging in to the Cabo Verdean experience, we learned this word ‘sodade,’” says Wise, “which translates to a kind of longing, for a place you had to leave, and sometimes for a place you miss even though you’ve never been there. There’s a poignancy to that feeling that fits with this season while also cutting across cultures.”

That feeling of living between two worlds provides an entrée into the retelling of the Celtic Selkie myth, in which a woman shapeshifts between her life in the sea and her life on land by donning or shedding her seal skin.

“It’s fitting this year, in particular, as Paddy passes the baton,” says Wise, who stepped into the role of interim artistic director last year when Patrick “Paddy” Swanson ended his 34-year run. Wise is only the third artistic director of the organization following founder John Langstaff and Swanson, who is an artistic adviser on the production this year.

“We are committed to continuing the tradition,” says Botkin, “while finding new ways to bring it to life.”

The magic inherent in the season and the storytelling allows all kinds of things to happen on stage, Wise says.

“There’s a delicious melancholy to this darkest time of year,” she says. “Making these cross-cultural connections through art helps create some meaning to our lives. We hope this shared experience allows people to embrace both the sodade and be able to enjoy the moment here now.”

THE SELKIE GIRL AND THE SEAL WOMAN: The Midwinter Revels: A Celtic & Cabo Verdean Celebration of the Solstice

Presented by Revels, Dec. 13-28, at Sanders Theatre, Cambridge. Tickets $45-$105, students/children $20-$80. www.revels.org/event/midwinter-revels/

Read this review on the Boston Globe website here