Revels Tales Told This Winter

With its 2024 annual Christmastime show, Santa Barbara Revels becomes the first of the regional Revels companies to present the organization’s newest endeavor: The Revels: A Winter Solstice Celebration – Tales from Ellis Island. Inaugurated in Cambridge just last year, the story finds a Mexican medical supervisor informing the newly-arrived immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Russia that new regulations require that they stay overnight on the island before admission. Thrown together unexpectedly, the disparate families first discover their differences before learning to appreciate and respect their individual customs and ultimately joining together to celebrate and participate in each other’s festivities through a rich blend of Jewish, Irish, and Mexican music, dance, and storytelling. 

As is her wont, SB Revels founder and producer Susan Keller put some local touches and additions in the piece, adding historically accurate backstory for some of the characters and altering sections to fit the company, excited merely to present something that would seem to appeal to a wide swath of local audiences. It became a lot more timely over the last two months. 

“This takes place on Christmas Eve of 1924 and here we are 100 years later and it’s surprisingly relevant, because we’re dealing with the same misunderstandings, lack of communication, and prejudices today,” Keller said. “This show is all about the fact that these ethnic groups all have different traditions, different customs. But they find a way to come together by communicating and understanding what they’ve each had to overcome to make it to America, creating hope for the future.” 

The story centers around two extended families: an Irish clan that includes a young woman, her widowed father and aunt, portrayed by Isabelle Marchand, Bill Egan, and Leesa Beck; and a Jewish family with a young man, his sister, and their grandmother, portrayed by David Beck, Anna Moy, and Revels favorite Meredith McMinn. Recent Revels regular Luis Moreno returns as the supervising doctor, while local celeb Paula Lopez portrays the “Spirit of Place,” aka the narrator. The youngsters provide the pathway to friendship, and over the course of the show, all the new immigrants relive the WWI story of Christmas in the Trenches, learn about the Irish involvement in the Mexican American War with The Sands of Mexico, sing Chanukah songs and Christmas carols, enjoy a traditional Jewish folk tale, and participate in dances from all their countries.

The breadth and scope of the music has challenged and enthralled new music director Mica Basilici, whose task is to weave everything seamlessly together. 

“It’s very exciting because we get to hear all these different musical traditions over the course of two hours, a lot of types of songs with different grooves and meanings behind them,” said Basilici, who also performs with Out of the Box Theatre Company, Opera Santa Barbara, and the Santa Barbara Choral Society, and works with the Music Academy’s SING! “Everything connects, but there’s also a lot of contrast, which just makes it refreshing.”

As always, all of the Revels favorites find their way into Tales from Ellis Island – which has three shows December 16-17 at the Lobero – including the Lord of the Dance (which this year incorporates “Hava Nagila”), a Mummers play by director Matt Tavianini, the Sword Dance, the “Sussex Mummers’ Carol,” adult and children/teen choruses, and, of course, lots of audience participation. As the Revels motto goes: Join us and be joyous.