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.