Santa Claus brings A Slightly Isol­ated Dog’s usu­al charm, wit and innu­endo to BATS’ Ran­dom Stage for the telling of a tale about a Santa Claus who is rather tired of put­ting up with naughty people’s bull­shit.

I shall not go too far into the plot of this sixty-minute show – to save you all from dreaded spoil­ers – but this Santa’s got a touch of the nihil­ist­ic about him, and he abso­lutely likes it. There is slightly more murder than you’d prob­ably expect in this play, and it’s a very wel­come change from our usu­al Christ­mas cheer.

A Slightly Isol­ated Dog’s Andrew Pater­son, Suzie Berry, Jack Buchanan and Jonath­an Price guide us through this tale, with music­al inter­ludes, sig­ni­fic­ant amounts of mime, and all the com­pli­ments one could ever want.

Inter­act­ive theatre can be hit or miss – espe­cially for those with anxi­ety issues like myself – but A Slightly Isol­ated Dog cre­ates such a pos­it­ive, fun envir­on­ment (and I hate to say ‘safe’ because of the con­nota­tions, but that’s what I mean) for the audi­ence that the anxi­ety of the whole thing just melts away. Tonight, my theatre-going com­pan­ion got to play Santa for two mem­or­able, sassy, parts, and I had the chance to be a reindeer – and it was very, very fun.

While the games of the show haven’t exactly changed since the com­pany’s pre­vi­ous pieces – there are aspects of the show that bear sig­ni­fic­ant resemb­lance to pre­vi­ous shows Don Juan and Jekyll and Hyde – everything runs like clock­work and is well-prac­tised and enjoy­able. Des­pite some of the bizarre offers that come out from the crowd, the per­formers take it all in their stride. The show is chaot­ic, yes – a par­tic­u­lar argu­ment­at­ive inter­lude about mono­poly hits rather close to home – but it still feels con­trolled, and strangely relat­able.

If you like your Christ­mas gifts to have a little more spice than nice, check out Santa Claus. It’s sexy, fun, and will leave you (pos­sibly) dread­ing your Christ­mas time to come.

(In a good way. Some­how.)

 

Santa Claus is on at BATS Theatre until the 15th of Decem­ber 2018. Tick­ets are avail­able from BATS’ web­site.