It’s Christmas Eve, 1864, on the banks of the Potomac River, just outside Washington D.C. We know this because in the TheatreWorks production of Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas, now through December 27 at the Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto, the actors and singers stand before us, look us in the eye, and tell us so in words, song, and a pair of pantomime horses. Balancing all the relentless exposition is a handful of intertwined stories, each of which culminates in redemption, deliverance, or forgiveness of some sort.
This is curiously sentimental stuff for Vogel, whose work is usually more at home with characters whose struggles shall not always be overcome. Here, her characters sing “Silent Night” without a hint of cynicism, belt out “Follow the Drinking Gourd” as they make their way north to freedom, and transform “The Yellow Rose of Texas” from a very red state’s unofficial marching song to a tender ballad of lost love. Even more curiously, it all pretty much works.
Part of the secret, I think, is that Vogel has a sure touch when it comes to the mechanics of her story. For example, she knows just how much peril to put a young Confederate volunteer named Raz (Jayne Delly) in, so much so that at one point we sincerely wonder if things are about to get rather dark. Similarly, we know that Vogel cannot let little lost Jessa (Myha’la Herrold and Tiana Travis alternate in the role) actually freeze to death on the streets of the nation’s capital, but she pushes things just far enough to give the inevitable mother-and-child reunion a satisfying, emotional punch.
Pacing is another of this show’s many strengths. The sets are always in motion, which means the 14 actors — playing some 90 roles — are almost always on the move, too. The result is that no actor, even the leads, hogs the spotlight for long. As soon as John Wilkes Booth (Kit Wilder) has revealed his plan to ambush the president, he exits to become someone else while we are spirited away on, say, a shopping trip with Abraham Lincoln’s famously neurotic wife, Mary (Diana Torres Koss), and her African-American confidante, Elizabeth Keckley (C. Kelly Wright).
Despite an economy of dialog, along with the inevitable stereotyping of Keckley as the simple but wise friend of color, the relationship between the two women feels surprisingly real, as does the one between an idealistic, Quaker private (Jonathan Shue) and his embittered and vengeful African-American sergeant-turned-blacksmith, Decatur Bronson (Michael A. Shepperd).