'Tis the season for holiday shows. The true and ancient reason for the season is the coming darkness of the Winter Solstice, so
Walking Shadow Theatre Company's contribution to the holiday theater season seems most appropriate.
A Midwinter Night's Revel, a sort of sequel to Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's Dream (
on glorious display at the Guthrie earlier this year), is a celebration of the darkness of the season, and the waiting and hoping that carries us through it to the sunnier days ahead. In fact this Shakespearean sequel, written and directed by Walking Shadow Artistic Directors John Heimbuch and Amy Rummenie, respectively, is so successful in recreating the characters and tone of the original, albeit it a bit darker and more bittersweet as appropriate to the setting of WWI-era England, that I wonder why we haven't seen more such sequels. I suspect it's not as easy as the cast and creative team of
A Midwinter Night's Revel make it look. It may be true that
it's hard to be the Bard, but you wouldn't know it from this delightful show.
