Joyous greetings to each of you this season, as we celebrate the promise of peace on Earth and good will toward men!
As I celebrate Christmas with my family, my heart is also full of gratitude for you, whose support strengthens my dream to use musical theatre in order to build beloved community. Thank you for being here!
I’m sending out this week’s newsletter a day early, because Christmas Eve seems like the right day for a review of a musical nativity. Singing Christmas carols while acting out the first Christmas was a family tradition when I was child, that continued in my own home when my children were young. So, today it seems right to send you my review of Journey to Bethlehem, a 2023 musical based on the events recorded in the second chapters of Matthew and Luke. I’m going to try to avoid giving too many spoilers.
Producing a musical about a sacred story that is retold every year in many millions of homes is incredibly ambitious. How do you make it fresh while also keeping it familiar? How do you portray Mary and Joseph in a way that is both relatable and honouring? And how do you hone in on one unifying message when there are so many compelling aspects of the story to explore?
It’s a daunting task, and it’s the music of this production that knocks the first objective out of the park. We start off with the traditional carol, “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” gorgeously sung, and then we segue into eleven beautiful new pop songs that carry us through three journeys toward Bethlehem, the three Magis’, Mary’s and Joseph’s, and Herod’s son Antipater’s. To me, the most compelling of these songs are “Mother to a Savior and King,” “Good to Be King”, “In My Blood” and the “Nativity Song.”
In “Mother to a Savior and King,” Mary anguishes about her confusion and her sense of inadequacy, pleading “Give me eyes to see/ Just how I can be/ Carrying your son when I need You/ To carry me” and “Help me have the faith you have in me.” The melody is haunting and actress Fiona Paloma sings it with her whole soul.
In “Good to Be King,” Herod gives us a stomach-clenching look into a psyche that delights in domination. “I’m a religion/ Look how they all worship me,” he sings, then revels in the power to order “Off with his head,” or be the one to grant his victim’s pleas for death. His son, Antipater, seems sometimes disturbed and sometimes drawn in, joining in the chorus of “Mine is the kingdom/ Mine is the Power/ Mine is the glory/ Forevermore.” This is chilling, especially because the melody alludes to similar words in Malotte’s “The Lord’s Prayer.” We get a sense that Herod sees himself as quasi-divine, and we know the lengths he’s prepared to go to in order to cling to power.
A few songs later, with “In My Blood,” Antipater processes the reality that his father is prepared to order the murder of all the pregnant women and their babies in Bethlehem, and that Antipater would be expected to carry it out. He recalls idolizing his father, becoming ruthless and relentless in order to win his approval, and now he’s horrified by his father and his own destiny. “Oh, no! What kind of king is in my blood?” he sings. “I don't know/ What kind of man have I become? (Oh-oh)/ I am stuck with this darkness that runs through my veins/ Am I a prisoner, or can I change, Lord?”
Finally, in “The Nativity Song,” all the threads come together. This is a mashup of “Silent Night” and “O Holy Night” together with original material that includes a solo by Mary “holding all the answers in [her] arms” and the Magi reverently reprising “Thine is the kingdom, Thine is the power, Thine is the glory, forevermore” as they fall to their knees by the manger cradle. All the threads except Antipater’s, and you’ll need to watch to see what happens there. Overall, the music does a masterful job of weaving together the fresh and the familiar to tell a powerful story.
It’s on the other two objectives – treating Mary and Joseph in a way that is both relatable and honouring, and highlighting one unifying theme – where this musical retelling falls a little short. On Mary and Joseph, I think it errs on the side of relatable rather than honouring. (This is also the case with the Angel Gabriel whose use for comic relief was surprising, and the Three Magi who are portrayed in the spirit of the Three Stooges). Mary is intelligent, ambitious and outspoken in a way that seems designed to appeal to modern audiences. But there is nothing in her character that comes across as particularly kind, nor do we get a sense that she has been navigating her life with a profound and anchoring trust in God. Her virtue seems to lie in pushing down her reservations and forcing herself to obey what is demanded of her by her traditions, her parents, and even by an angel. This Mary doesn’t consent to her calling. She doesn’t say “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord.” The only significant choice she gets to make is the attitude with which she obeys. Gabriel gives her an empowering message, that she is not to cower to anyone, But I find myself longing to tell her more: that she matters, that God cares about her feelings and her consent, and that she is just as able to receive heavenly guidance going forward as any of the men in her life.
Joseph is more problematic. We meet him in a way that gives us reason to mistrust him and to share Mary’s reservations about their betrothal. Then, instead of acknowledging his offence, he first defends his behaviour and then tells Mary he didn’t want to be betrothed to her either. They are starting off on such a shaky foundation that their relationship is hard to invest in. I wonder if the story was supposed to give hope and direction to modern Christian women who are feeling betrayed by a husband’s struggle with pornography. If so, it falls flat because there isn’t time to develop the story with any depth. Instead, we get a superficial treatment that risks conveying a problematic message: Entering into holy matrimony is more important than waiting for someone you can trust, and a woman’s job is to be obedient and forgiving; then God will work wonders in her man and he will become trustworthy.
I think it would have been better to approach Mary and Joseph’s journey with an eye to a unifying theme about what defines a true king. We could have seen Mary and Joseph drawn to each other because they both harbored a counter-cultural expectation for the promised Messiah. Yes, he would come to deliver Israel. But Mary and Joseph would emphasize the good tidings he would bring to the meek and how he would bind up the broken-hearted and proclaim liberty to the captives, while the prevalent expectation was that he would destroy the enemies of the Jews. Later, Joseph could have been pressured to make a public example of Mary because, as a direct descendant of David, he owed that to his blood. But his decision to instead exercise compassion and dissolve the betrothal privately could have led to Gabriel’s revelation that she was telling the truth. Throughout, we could have seen Mary, Joseph and the wise men seeking after an ideal of kinghood that is meek, loving and even self-sacrificing while Herod represented the opposite. All of this could lead beautifully to Antipater’s defining moment at the end, in a way that could touch viewers so profoundly that our minds would keep returning to it for days.
Overall, I’m glad I watched Journey to Bethlehem. It had powerful moments. It won’t be joining It’s a Wonderful Life, The Christ Child: A Nativity Story and The Muppet Christmas Carol on my list of favourites that I could watch every Christmas. That's a little sad, because with the changes I’ve mentioned, it could have. But if you’re looking for a fresh nativity to watch tonight, this is a fun choice. It’s streaming on the major platforms.
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