When you think of a Victorian Christmas, you may imagine corseted ladies and men with starched collars feasting on goose and figgy pudding around a dining room table, or a humble farm family celebrating the holiday with simple means. However, Mystic Seaport’s annual Victorian Christmas event, Lantern Light Tours, is anything but prim and proper. “I love that combination of history and broad comedy because it seems unexpected,” says Denise Kegler, Supervisor of Museum Theater at Mystic Seaport. “The audience comes in expecting this really polite Victorian Christmas, [so] to throw out this really big character I think is very funny and can be unexpected and fun!”
In its 37th year, the Mystic Seaport Lantern Light Tours present an immersive theater experience around the living history maritime village in Mystic, Connecticut. This year’s Lantern Light Tours begins November 25, 2016, and runs on select dates until December 23, 2016.
Each year the show’s theme changes, with past productions inspired by Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, The Gift of the Magi, and “The 12 Days of Christmas.” This year’s show, Nut-Cracker Sweets, is written by Connecticut playwright, Anna Maria Trusky. “[T]he Nutcracker was the one [idea] that really took her inspiration, so she took that idea of The Nutcracker and really ran with it,” says Kegler. She offered Trusky a handful of potential themes and ideas as jumping points for this year’s show in the initial planning stages of Lantern Light Tours. No matter the theme, the show is rooted in historic Greenmanville, a small community where Mystic Seaport is located.
In rain, snow, or any weather in between, the 70-minute show takes the audience on a magical journey through the village on Christmas Eve, 1876. They will meet Marie and Fritz Stahlbaum, characters from the original The Nutcracker story, who now are grown up and own a bakery in Mystic. The play does more reimagining than retelling, letting audiences see appearances of notable characters in The Nutcracker, like Mother Ginger and Clara—but each character comes in its own incarnation through Trusky’s vision. “Her creativity interpreting The Nutcracker for the format and style of our production was just outstanding—it’s a really unique interpretation,” says Kegler.
A new script every year means loads of surprises for the audience, but there are five iconic elements guests can count on with each Lantern Light Tour: a horse and carriage ride, visiting one of Mystic Seaport’s ships, participating in a lively dance, receiving a gingerbread cookie, and a visit from a Santa Claus-type character. “Every year we have a Santa Claus figure and it can vary whether it is Santa Claus, or some other representation. In this case Mr. Drosselmeyer, the clockmaker and magician from The Nutcracker is our Santa Claus representative,” says Kegler. Other years, Santa Claus has appeared as a sailor or a toy-maker, but sometimes the “jolly old elf” comes to the show in his recognizable form. “I hope that [visitors] have a really entertaining and heartfelt experience,” says Kegler, “But I hope that everyone is thoroughly entertained and also have that […] personal connection and sentimental [Christmas] feeling.”
While the theme of the Christmas show changes every year, the basis and core remains the same: “One of the things Mystic Seaport [focuses on] is to make a connection to America and the sea in the past, present, and future,” says Kegler. Keeping within the history of American maritime life also turns that idyllic Victorian family scene into a different way of celebrating Christmas. “The idea that you might have a family with a father, or brother, or son, or husband away for the holiday, perhaps even for several years in a row, is a very different American experience—it’s a story that we can tell and keep part of our cultural consciousness.”
Whether you go to have a Victorian Christmas or for the comedy and characters, audiences are bound to be enchanted with the magical journey through Mystic Seaport’s Nut-Cracker Sweets Lantern Light Tours.
For more information, visit Mystic Seaport’s website here.
Originally featured in Wordsby Arts & Culture News.
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