Eric Schwierske
The show’s groundbreaking score includes a cappella versions of folk music and patriotic songs.
There are no singing snowmen, flying reindeer or dancing Christmas trees in Four Seasons Theatre’s holiday musical, which runs Dec. 6-15 in the Playhouse at Overture. Instead, All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914 is based on a true story of peace and fellowship that temporarily interrupted a terrible war.
A spontaneous cease-fire happened on a cold night on the Western Front during World War I. Men who had been fighting each other for months in the trenches of France put their weapons down to enjoy Christmas together after a German soldier walked out into no man’s land singing “Stille Nacht” (Silent Night). By the end of the surreal celebration, enlisted men from opposite sides of the world were playing soccer, passing around a bottle, sharing pictures of their families, and greeting each other as what they were: soldiers far from home on Christmas night, missing their loved ones. This historically based, unorthodox holiday story is at the center of All Is Calm, augmented with a collection of folk music, patriotic songs from the era, and excerpts from actual radio broadcasts, letters and journals.
“I’ve heard many tellings of the Christmas truce story through the years,” says director Brian Cowing. “There’s a great line in the show: ‘It was absolutely astounding, and if I had seen it on a cinematograph film I should have sworn it was faked.’ So, even as it was happening there was this sense of disbelief from the two different sides.”
All Is Calm is quite different from the usual big orchestra productions Four Seasons has mounted in the past. It’s an a cappella musical featuring 10 actors. It was created by Cantus, a men’s vocal ensemble based in Minneapolis. “Our singers met on the first day of rehearsal and have been working with our music director to really find their sound as a group,” says Cowing. “This is a really talented bunch of local actors, and they sound wonderful together.”
Music Director Randal Swiggum was also familiar with the Christmas truce of 1914, through composer Kevin Puts, whose 2011 opera Silent Night tells the same story — and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012. “It’s really difficult music,” he says. “Cantus is a professional men’s choir, so the expectation is a level of musical sophistication that goes beyond just singing a few harmonies. But the cast sounds great. It will be ‘goosebumps’ kind of singing.”
Swiggum says most of the music will be familiar to audiences, including an arrangement of “Silent Night” that’s breathtakingly beautiful; first intimate and tender, and then epic. “But each familiar carol seems like you’re hearing it the first time because of this unsettling context — the trenches of warfare.
“This show combines exquisite music with a deeper message about what makes us human, and what makes Christmas so powerful,” adds Swiggum. “And the fact that it’s a true story, told through the voices of the men who were there, means…well, no one will forget this show.”
