Review: CenterStage’s ‘All Is Calm’ is one of the most moving pieces of theater you’ll see this year

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After that first vivid encounter with the soldiers at the opening of the show, led by a sterling-voiced Hunter Oehlschlaeger singing “Will Ye go to Flanders,” we scoot back to England for the start of the war. Songs such as Irving Berlin’s “Come On and Join” and “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” set the buoyant tone. The high point of a war, it seems, is always the men marching off to it.

Then reality sets in: The rain. The rot. The trenches. The stench of death. The awful way that one tiny mistake – a soldier forgetting for a moment where he is and standing tall in a trench – can result in instant death. The song “I Want to Go Home” says it all.

Yet when Christmas comes, something remarkable happens. To me, the most moving moment in “All Is Calm” is when the show truly lives up to its title: the silence. As the truce takes hold, the soldiers slowly approach each other, hands raised, without uttering a sound. I could feel that silence envelop the audience, seep into us, infuse us with hope. After many minutes of rousing human vocals, we witnessed rousing human stillness. It was quite profound.

Many of the solo voices are stunning. Bryan Carlson is stirring in “Silent Night.” Daniel Sutherland and Darren Tharp resonate with deep, lower tones. Brandon Roberts, whose high tenor is key in the ensemble numbers, soars in “O Holy Night.”

The acting is piercingly good as well. Building a character in just a few sentences is no easy feat, but most of the snippets of real people come across as sturdy and true. In the most tender bit of melancholy, Randy Kohlruss brings a Scottish flair. Eric Estep blusters as a high-ranking officer. Peter Allwine captures the touch of the common man.

As stage director, Madison Alley deftly moves the large ensemble around the small stage with a smooth, crisp sense of purpose. Aldape’s projections are sparingly used but highly effective. Ginger Lewis Reed’s costumes, in black, are a strong mix of fabrics and textures, all suggesting the cold and wet of the front.

Through it all is a sense of rebelling against the status quo, of fighting back against the elite, of bending the rules of the way war “should be.” When you really think about it, the Christmas Truce is the stuff of which court martials are made. The play espouses a truly radical idea: Stand up and say enough is enough.

But using the past as a kind of salve, “All is Calm” skirts any type of real-world issues of military propriety. It is astutely non-political. It’s perfectly safe to perform within the walls of a veterans building. It is, essentially, a fantasy. And a beautiful one at that.

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Perhaps it all goes down easier because of the songs, presented nearly back-to-back, which gives the short, intermissionless production a sense of constantly moving forward. I can’t say enough about the power of the voices (the show’s sound design is superb) and the plaintive feelings they evoke.

Humans are capable of so much, including fierce contradictions. We fight each other with a desperation and cruelty so resourceful it can be astonishing. Yet we write glorious music that represents the highest reaches of the soul. Could “Silent Night” come from a race of total monsters? Thankfully, no. Because of “All is Calm,” the most elevated aspects of humanity triumph in battle. Now just comes the harder part: winning the war.