Written with an embracing expansiveness by Ms. Vogel (a Pulitzer Prize winner for “How I Learned to Drive”), and featuring handsomely sung hymns and carols of the period, this unusual holiday pageant represents an illuminating alternative to the often garish or sentimental holiday fare foisted on theater audiences. Instead of a stocking full of sugar-shock-inducing candy, the show offers some real sustenance, even as it gently accentuates the spirit of hope and good will that even professional Scrooges try to embrace as the year winds down. 

It’s a particularly chilly Christmas Eve in Washington, and the chill does not derive only from the quickly descending temperature. President Abraham Lincoln (Bob Stillman) has recently won re-election, and preparations are under way for his second inauguration. But the country is still riven by war, and troops on both sides are hunkered down for a frigid night with little hope of lasting peace ahead. 

The spare wooden set, by James Schuette, emphasizes the hardship faced by most of the characters, who include Robert E. Lee (Sean Allan Krill) and his dog-tired, increasingly disarrayed Confederate troops, and Ulysses S. Grant (Chris Henry) and his only marginally better supplied Union combatants. One strand of the plot follows attempts to secure a Christmas tree, a new fashion imported from Germany. But there are no trees to be found; they have all been cut down for fires to warm the troops. 

Ms. Vogel has taken particular care to salvage from the margins of history the experience of African-Americans. The production’s ample cast of characters includes Decatur Bronson (K. Todd Freeman), a composite figure inspired by two black soldiers who were awarded the Medal of Honor for their service in the war. 

Bronson has given up his charge of a regiment of black soldiers to work as a blacksmith at a Union Army supply depot. He is still tormented by the kidnapping of his wife by Confederate soldiers fleeing the Gettysburg field of battle. Bronson has determined that should he ever again find Confederate prisoners in his power, he will seek vengeance by taking their lives. 

Elizabeth Keckley (Karen Kandel) was an actual figure: a slave who purchased her freedom, using her gifts as a seamstress, and went on to dress the cream of Washington society, including the first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, played by the musical theater veteran Alice Ripley. (Their friendship also figures significantly in the current movie “Lincoln.”) Like the first lady, who still wears mourning for the death of one of her young sons, Elizabeth is haunted by loss: her beloved son abandoned his college studies to join the Union Army, and was killed. 

Visited by his ghost — “A Civil War Christmas” is peopled by almost as many ghosts as “A Christmas Carol” — she finds herself touched to the point of anguish when she learns that a young African-American girl, Jessa (Sumaya Bouhbal), is wandering the streets of the city on this frigid night. Jessa lost touch with her mother, Hannah (Amber Iman), as they fled across the Potomac to find freedom in Washington. 

With a deftness that is surprising, given the breadth of experience she has chosen to include in her panoramic view of American society, Ms. Vogel links these stories together cleanly and efficiently. There is a sense of poetry, too, in her suggestion that the lives of Americans on both sides of the Civil War were so deeply intertwined that, despite their differences and sometimes fierce enmity, the country and its people share a united destiny: unseen filaments tie together all the lives of the characters. Eventually the angry Confederate boy who dreams of joining up with a band of marauding raiders finds himself staring down Decatur Bronson’s gun barrel, praying for his life. 

The president’s journey through the story is, like that of many of the characters, solitary. Finding he has left his wife’s Christmas gifts at their summer home, he decides to escape his minders — who have been apprised that assassins are lurking nearby — on Christmas Eve and venture forth on horseback to retrieve them. 

Free from the burden of his fractious cabinet, and his emotionally unstable wife, he rides through the night with a sense of happy freedom on his shoulders. Mr. Stillman’s austere, dignified performance is enlivened by appealing touches of dry humor, while Ms. Ripley’s Mary is depicted as both a nervous shopaholic and a troubled but humane woman who visits wounded soldiers incognito. 

Directed in brisk story-theater style by Tina Landau, with minimal props and simple costumes used to move the story quickly from one location to another, “A Civil War Christmas” is rich in precise historical detail, but it never feels like a series of talking dioramas in a history museum. Even the most quickly sketched characters exude the warmth of real human beings, thanks to vivid performances from the cast. (Children may particularly enjoy the brief romance between a horse and a mule, amusingly conducted to the strains of a seductive duet from “Don Giovanni.”) 

And when the actors’ voices rise together in song — in well-chosen spirituals, along with war songs, hymns and carols like “Silent Night” and “O Christmas Tree” — there arises from the dark history being told an ineffable sense of wonder at the survival of faith and humanity even in hearts ravaged by loss.
“The hope of peace is sweeter than peace itself,” one character remarks, an observation that speaks to the show’s clear-eyed but compassionate view of history. A lasting peace may be forever just over the horizon, but there is solace in our ability to keep believing that it may one day come ambling along. 

A Civil War Christmas
By Paula Vogel; directed by Tina Landau; musical supervision, arrangements and incidental music by Daryl Waters; musical direction by Andrew Resnick; sets by James Schuette; costumes by Toni-Leslie James; lighting by Scott Zielinski; sound by Jill B C Du Boff; dialect coach, Deborah Hecht; production stage manager, Lori Lundquist. Presented by New York Theater Workshop, James C. Nicola, artistic director; William Russo, managing director. At New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, East Village; (212) 279-4200, ticketcentral.com. Through Dec. 30. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
WITH: Sumaya Bouhbal (Jessa/Little Joe/Others), K. Todd Freeman (Decatur Bronson/James Wormley/Others), Chris Henry (Chester Saunders/Ulysses S. Grant/John Surratt/Others), Rachel Spencer Hewitt (Raz/Mary Surratt/Others), Antwayn Hopper (Walker Lewis/Jim Wormley/Others), Amber Iman (Hannah/Rose/Mrs. Thomas/Others), Jonathan-David (Ely Parker/Silver/Frederick Wormley/Moses Levy/Others), Karen Kandel (Elizabeth Keckley/Willy Mack/Others), Sean Allan Krill (Robert E. Lee/William Tecumseh Sherman/John Wilkes Booth/Others), Alice Ripley (Mary Todd Lincoln/Lewis Payne/Others) and Bob Stillman (Abraham Lincoln/Raider/Others).