No two things are more opposed to each other than war and Christmas. Christmas is a time to love life and our neighbor, to wish peace and good will toward all. War is a time to hate our neighbor and to celebrate his death, and death generally. War is at war with Christmas, and Christmas is at war with war. Occasionally, where the stakes are low and the antagonists are not too different from each other (see Silent Night, which just finished a run at Washington National Opera), Christmas wins. More often, war wins. During the American Civil War, war won, big time.
So you know, going in, that Paula Vogel’s effort to capture the Christmas spirit with the Civil War as a backdrop will be draped in melancholy, and irony. It is Christmas Eve, 1864. Appomattox is still four months away; the North knows that it will be victor; so does the South. Under those circumstances, what resistance remains, fierce and fundamental, is also dangerous and destructive. To the Union remains the uneasy task of creating a post-slavery America; to the Confederacy only resentment and the ashes of defeat. (“We killed three hundred thousand of you,” a bitter Confederate soldier (Joshua Simon) sings, “I wish we had killed three million.”)
Vogel elects a diffuse style of storytelling, with a pastiche of short narratives, disconnected from themselves and draped around some soaring music. Vogel said: “The music came first, and then I went through history looking for a true story that actually fit the music,” and some of the music is familiar (“Yellow Rose of Texas”, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”) but unless you are a Civil War buff (or a student of the music of the American slave community) I doubt you have previously heard “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” (Vogel partnered with Daryl Waters in putting the music together).
But whether the music is familiar or obscure, the 1st Stage ensemble delivers it beautifully, in full voice and perfectly balanced. That this formidable score is performed so well is a tribute not only to the skills of the cast but more particularly to the work of Music Director Markus Williams, who, in an obscene twist of fate, died at the incredibly young age of 46 two days into tech rehearsal for the play.
Vogel’s stories run from the powerful (a young girl (Karma Price), newly escaped from slavery, wanders the freezing streets of Washington looking for the home of the one man she knows will protect her — Abraham Lincoln) to the trivial (Mary Todd Lincoln (Rebecca Ballinger) obtains a Christmas tree for the White House, not knowing that it was intended for her friend and seamstress, Elizabeth Keckley (a very strong Ayanna Hardy, in good voice)). Vogel gives all the stories equal time, more or less, and as a result, tension-filled narratives are interrupted by more comic ones. In less skilled hands this might become frustrating, even disengaging, but director Deidre Lawan Starnes moves the action along smoothly; the actors appear at precisely the correct moment, in character (there are twelve actors playing, by my count, forty-five characters), often moving pieces of Jessica Cancino’s set with them.
One of the most compelling stories belongs to Sgt. Bronson (V. Savoy McIlwain), a Free Man of Color who has become a ruthless killing machine for the Union army. He has a special motivation to lay Confederates in the ground: while he was away from home, a Confederate band invaded his home and took his wife (Billie Krishawn) with them. When Erasmus (Sophie Achulman), a foolish young boy who has joined Mosby’s Raiders with the war lost tries to steal food from Bronson, the Sergeant catches him. You can imagine what happens next. Or can you?
In another compelling story, a young girl (Price) and her mother (Kirshawn) try to escape slavery by entering Washington. They are blocked at a bridge by a sentry, who peremptorily observes that there are enough of their kind in DC already. The mother smuggles her daughter onto the back of a wagon coming through, with instructions to meet her at the White House. But the young girl, who doesn’t know how to read and doesn’t know her right from her left, is soon lost in the bewildering City and wanders the streets in the fifteen degree cold. You might think that Vogel crafted this scene with our current nightmare in mind, but she wrote it back in 2012, when we were in civil discourse, not Civil War.
Even the story of the comic efforts of two buffoonish young men (Demitrius Carter and Tiziano D’Affuso) to retrieve a hard-to-obtain Christmas Tree intended for Keckley from the White House carries its own measure of poignancy. When they try to explain to their father (Gary L. Perkins III), whose dry-goods store obtained the tree, that the First Lady demanded the tree, he shoots back “Elizabeth Keckley is our First Lady,” and you get an instant look at the pride and sense of alienation which prevailed within the culture of Free Blacks in Washington at the time.
Particularly at the beginning, the fine orchestra (uncredited) occasionally overwhelms individual singers. There is not an orchestra in the world, however, which could overwhelm the cannon-voiced Russell Rinker, who plays Lincoln, Walt Whitman, and some other characters. His basso profundo voice immediately adds gravity to whatever scene he is in, and gives his character a charisma which our brilliant, tormented 16th President never had in real life.
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Rinker’s is not the only fine voice. McIlwain’s resonant baritone is perfect for the character he portrays, and Perkins’ fine tenor is commanding throughout. Not every voice is always equal to the music, but no one is painfully out of tune, and the choral singing is magnificent.
The most complicated role is that of Mary Todd Lincoln, and Ballinger does a good job with her. Mary Lincoln was a jumble of nerves who knew she should be kind and generous, and tried to be, but was often not successful. Don’t take my word for it; it’s in the text of the play, more or less. Ballinger plays Mary like a woman trying to escape her own skin, uttering a cacophony of hard-charging words, constantly reassuring and correcting herself, horrifyingly vulnerable in a hostile world. Ballinger gets that, and shows it.
Simon also renders several strong performances, particularly as Levy, a dying Union soldier who Mary Lincoln desperately tries to comfort, She sings “Silent Night”, bewildering Levy, who is Jewish. Thereupon, the ensemble delivers a magnificent “Kaddish” as Levy dies.
As if to counterbalance the sanctity of the death of someone who dies for freedom, Simon also convincingly plays John Wilkes Booth and sings the secret verse of Maryland’s State Song, “Maryland, My Maryland” — the one that calls Northerners “scum” and pleads for the State to join the rebellion (it never did).
Not every story reaches resolution; among those that do, not every resolution is satisfactory. Not every song uplifts; not every character resonates. It is that way on real Christmas, too, in Syria and Iraq, in Yemen and Venezuela, and also here, and every place where war and Christmas collide, and the outcome is uncertain.
A Civil War Christmas by Paula Vogel, with Daryl Waters responsible for the music. Directed by Deidra Lawan Starnes, assisted by Rocky Nunzio. Music direction by Markus Williams, Walter “Bobby” McCoy and Leigh Delano. Featuring Suzy Alden, Rebecca Ballinger, Demitrus Carter, Tiziano D’Affuso, Ayanna Hardy, Billie Kirshawn, V. Savoy McIlwain, Gary L.Perkins III, Karma Price, Russell Rinker, Sophie Schulman and Jushua Simon. Set design by Jessica Cancino . Costume design by Danielle Preston . Lighting design by John D. Alexander . Sound design by David Lamont Wilson . Props design by Cindy Landrum Jacobs . Jane Margulies Kalbfled is the dialect coach . Katie Rey Bogdan is the dramaturg . Sam Rollin is the stage manager . Produced by 1st Stage . Reviewed by Tim Treanor.
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