The Christmas Revels at the Lobero

A dozen years ago, a brave new Christmas season tradition in the making hit town, in the form of a local branch of the winter-solstice-themed Christmas Revels program. With roots in 19th British Yuletide celebration tradition, Christmas Revels debuted in New York City in 1957 and became an official organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1974, now including ten Revels companies around the nation.

Here in Santa Barbara, the effort was launched by intrepid founder/artistic director and participant Susan Keller and is firmly entrenched in the canon of perennial Christmas-calendar-timed activities in town (apart from a hastily canceled 2017 program, due to the Thomas Fire’s interruption of life-as-usual). Each production shifts locale and setting, from various points in the British Isles to New England and, locally, making a thematic stop in Alta California’s “Rancho” period.

This weekend, the music-dance-singalong-vintage merriment-narrative production arrives for two performances at the Lobero Theatre. This time out, Revels goes Italianate, in the form of a show dubbed The Christmas Revels: A Venetian Celebration of the Winter Solstice.