GO TELL IT!

There are many ways to celebrate the holiday season on Boston-area stages, ranging from dance interpretations of The Nutcracker to performances and revisions of Dickens, to the ever-new traditional Revels and shows that use the Christmas season as a backdrop for stories of joy and even hilarity. None get so deeply to the heart of the Christian source of Christmas, however, as the National Center of Afro-American Artists annual performance of Black Nativity.

Now in its 55^th consecutive year, this song-play (so described by its author, Langston Hughes, 1902–1967) is offered as a gift from Boston’s Black community. Using gospel music to tell the nativity story of Mary and Joseph and the birth of baby Jesus, a large and talented rotating cast of singers (Voices of Black Persuasion) and musicians bring compelling elements of blues, jazz, and spirituals to the story. Many of the performers, such as bass Jermaine Tulloch, are professionals. Others are devoted amateurs, having sung with the company for years and even decades. Vivian Cooley-Collier, for example, was part of the original cast of 1970 and has been part of the performance ever since! (And whose son was the first baby Jesus.) The company is ensuring its future with Children of Black Persuasion, a group of about 20 young people who rotate through the performances, and who memorably take center stage on “Mary, Mary, What You Gonna’ Name Your Baby” to surround Mary and her newborn infant.

Different narrators link the musical numbers to the Bible story at different performances. I saw the Honorable Milton L. Wright, a retired judge in Boston’s Municipal Court, who is also a professional actor, director, musician, music producer, and songwriter. As the only speaker, Wright weaves together Hughes’s text and the music. When Joseph and the very pregnant Mary arrive in Bethlehem, they famously find there is no room at the inn. In Hughes’s retelling, the “inn” is the Ritz Hotel and in one of the few departures from the Biblical account, the story denounces the callousness of the rich in the face of need. (I would love to see a production in which the performers were costumed as the Harlem maids and butlers Hughes originally intended.)

Among the highlights of the show are Mary and Joseph’s individual dances. Taleah Goodridge-Gilliard, in a wide-skirted white gown, delivered a rhythmic, African-inflected and sometimes dervish-like representation of a woman’s labor and delivery backed by African percussionists. The culmination of Goodridge-Gilliard’s fascinating dance was a living baby that emerges from her voluminous garment. On the night I saw it, the infant was baby Kimberly Nance, with an old-soul face and demeanor that fulfilled its very big-time role. Mary’s dance was followed by Joseph’s shorter but also deeply emotive dance, performed by William Graves.

As in the Biblical accounts, shepherds come to see the baby, as do the three Magi in resplendent robes of red, purple, gold, and silver. Throughout, we are treated to energetic renditions of Christmas songs such as “Joy to the World,” “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and many others, delivered with complex and fascinating hand-clapping arrangements that draw the seated audience into the experience. By the time the production ends, in a jazzed-up version of “Away in a Manger,” the joy of the season and the hope for peace on earth fill the theater, sending the audience out into the world to go and tell, whether in words or in action, of the power of possibility and resilience for people of all nations.

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photos courtesy of Black Nativity

Black Nativity
Emerson Paramount Center, 559 Washington Street in Boston
ends December 21, 2026
for tickets, call 617.824.8400 or visit Black Nativity

for more shows, visit Theatre in Boston

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Lynne Weiss is a member of the Boston Theater Critics Association. Her work has also appeared in Literary Ladies Guide and in The Common, Black Warrior Review, and the Ploughshares Blog. She has an MFA from UMass Amherst and has received residencies from Yaddo, the Millay Colony, and Vermont Studio Center and grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. A lifelong social justice activist, she is at work on a novel set in 1930s Cornwall. Her reviews, travel tales, and progressively optimistic opinions are on her substack.