Back by Popular Demand!
The Eight: Reindeer Monologues
by Jeff Goode
Directed by Josh Costello
- 11/25/05 REVIEW: O.C. Weekly
- 11/25/05 REVIEW: O.C. Register
- 11/29/05 REVIEW: Northern Lights
THEATER REVIEW
The Eight: Reindeer Monologues
by Joel Beers, O.C. Weekly
November 25, 2005
The Eight: Reindeer Monologues is a funny, obvious, irreverent satire that deflates the warm, fuzzy tale of Santa and his reindeer by casting the fat bastard in the red suit as a horny drunken sod who feels up his hoofed henchman. This kind of thing pops up in lots of alternative Christmas fare: Santa’s a pervert, elves are gay, Christmas has a perverse underbelly, etc. I’m not saying it’s not funny, but it’s a staple on everything from sketch TV shows to David Sedaris’ NPR bits.
But Jeff Goode’s play has a bigger target than Santa and his reindeer: the collective denial, hypocrisy and oppressive weight of the holidays. Rather than a time for friends, families and communities to spread good will to men, Goode suggests, it’s also an opportunity for the malice and ill will that defines us the rest of the year to shine at its most garishly perverse.
The eight reindeer (played by eight Chance Theater stalwarts, all of whom give spirited, distinct performances) discuss their relationship with each other, Santa and the elves as one big family. But Santa is more Charles Manson than Bill Cosby. Alcoholism, rape, pedophilia and repressed memories of child abuse continually pop up in the eight monologues, which nearly equate Santa and his toy factory to Catholic priests and the inner recesses of their sanctuaries.
The Eight: Reindeer Monologues isn’t all heavy. Each monologue has exquisitely humorous moments. But by play’s end, when a female reindeer’s sexual history is put on trial because she dares to claim she’s been raped, things do get intensely serious. Ultimately, Goode is taking on the entire institution of Christmas, and the sobering question he leaves us with is whether this orgy of consumerism might just be an elaborate smoke screen meant to disguise the rapaciously self-centered creatures who’ve concocted a most noble myth for the most ignoble of purposes.
Did I mention it’s also really, really funny?
THE EIGHT: REINDEER MONOLOGUES AT THE CHANCE THEATER, 5552 E. LA PALMA AVE., ANAHEIM, (714) 777-3033. SAT., 4 P.M.; SUN., 6 P.M. THROUGH DEC. 18. $17-$20.
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THEATER REVIEW
Turning Santa On His Ear
Anaheim staging puts an adult spin on the flying team
by Eric Marchese, O.C. Register
November 25, 2005
With so much of comedy dependent upon goring sacred cows, "The Eight: Reindeer Monologues" should be a scream - for are any icons as sacred as Santa Claus?
In his 1994 script, playwright Jeff Goode (rhymes with "mood") frames St. Nick as a hypocrite whose untainted public image masks a predilection for sexual encounters with the female reindeers in his employ. After Santa has forced himself upon her, Vixen becomes the first of his victims to go public, touching off a firestorm of controversy.
Goode's comedy is structured as a series of monologues by each of the eight reindeer made famous in the pop song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," allowing Goode to satirize without mercy normally untouchable holiday myths and other aspects of American society.
In his Chance Theater Repertory Company staging, director Josh Costello shows his affinity for Goode's stinging humor. A year ago, Costello helmed the Chance staging of "Reindeer," and although most of the same actors are back in the same roles, this is a new interpretation, keeping much of what made the 2004 production fly while upping the ante with a fresh perspective on the material.
Goode's text is coarse, crude, vulgar and sidesplitting, peppered with topical references specific enough to be funny, yet not bound by current events - jabs at big media, big business, the legal profession and more.
In Costello's hands, each reindeer is as complex as any human, each monologue gradually building to an apex of anger or indignation. All eight performers are given identical makeup: shiny black nose, red cheeks, floppy ears and, in the case of the bucks, antlers. This year, nearly every reindeer does his or her part to help decorate the large onstage Christmas tree, creating continuity between scenes.
Dasher (Casey Long), the "first reindeer" on the sleigh team, sets the stage. Of all the North Pole's reindeer, he tells us, the eight are "the elite," expected to tough it out each Christmas Eve, even if it means "flying into the side of a skyscraper that wasn't there a year ago." In his NASCAR-style getup, Long lends the character a down-home, macho delivery and blunt manner that are refreshingly direct.
In a monologue that closely resembles a raunchy stand-up routine, Cupid, the team's "only openly gay reindeer," labels Santa a "a greasy, fat wife-beater" and Christmas that most dysfunctional of holidays. The character gets a cheerful and (literally) gay reading by Jason Sechrest, with exaggeratedly effeminate mannerisms and a braying cackle that turns the character into a sort of demented donkey.
Doe Blitzen (Alex Bueno) gives us the perspective of a militant feminist. In flak jacket and jackboots, armed to the teeth with weaponry, she's confident there's no question, she says, that Vixen was raped by "the jolly fat pervert." Whether barking "when a doe says no, she means no!" or sprinkling gasoline all over the tree, preparing to set it afire, Bueno's tough-guy posturings are among the show's peaks. By contrast, Sarah Moreau's Dancer is a former ballerina, an innocent Suzy Homemaker type who informs us, in a squeaky, cartoony voice, that on-the-job rape amounts to "hazardous working conditions" for the does - though she could never formally indict Kris Kringle's lewd behavior.
Heather Howe's testimony as Vixen, "the world's most famous victim," forms the show's dramatic climax, as Vixen relates how Santa long fantasized about having sex with her before acting. Howe's portrayal is funny and poignant as Vixen can scarcely contain her fury over the double standard that finds Santa beyond reproach while implying her complicity.
Though no less entertaining, not all the monologues directly support or refute Vixen's charges. A shirtless, martial-arts pants-clad Comet (Carter Mason) confesses his former antics as a wild frat boy before being rescued by Santa, his attempts at playing character witness for Santa comically misguided (the two share a love of excess). Pete Caslavka's "Hollywood," (aka Prancer) is a film-capital pretty boy who scorns the annual Claymation Rudolph TV special while hyping his own live feature film, getting laughs with a Michael J. Fox-like voice and increasingly suggestive poses for a tripod-mounted still camera. Richard Comeau plays Donner, a fired herd deer with a bad back given a spot on the team as a way to help son Rudolph, with a deadpan Sad Sack manner, his emotional confession driven by the despair felt by any parent of a mentally challenged child.
This is more or less a bare-bones staging framed by Costello's re-envisioning of the script, Howe's imaginative costumes and eight performances that are, from the standpoint of satire, right on target - and a refreshing rejoinder to the many syrupy holiday plays that glut the theater scene this time of year.
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THEATER REVIEW
Back by popular demand - irreverent, deviant, bawdy, in your face, the scandalous eight!
by Anne-Margret Bellavoine, Northern Lights
November 29, 2005
Nice has little place in this scandalously irreverent romp on the top eight antlered bucks and does which make up the team for their once a year run.
Jeff Goode's wickedly funny play debunks Santa Claus myths with pettifogging as each of the eight gives their take on the scabrous story in their monologues. Josh Costello returns as director.
Dasher (Casey Long) is the ur-redneck, ranting at Rudolph's usurping him on one - and one only - night, stealing his show. As for the red clad 'fat boy,' let's not even go there!
Cupid (Jason Sechrest) is gregariously over-the-top and openly 'out of the closet.' His risqué monologue exposes the darkest secrets of the Claus household, from the harassment by the Mrs., to her husband's flagrant exploitation of children.
Hollywood, aka Prancer, (Pete Caslavka) brings his own issues, including the blatant slight that no animal, not even Bambi, has ever won an Oscar.
Blitzen (Alex Bueno) is an angry feminist who thinks kids stop believing into the myth because of the repressed memories of an evil old man who has the uncanny, disturbing power to know when they are sleeping, even worming himself into their very homes as they lay in bed awaiting gifts.
Comet (Carter Mason), however, worships good old Saint Nick who rescued him from a shelter for troubled deer, turning his life around.
Dancer (Sarah Moreau) is a vapid blonde who hung up her ballet slippers, preferring to bake cookies, but bemoaning the working conditions of her 24 hour a year job. She feels ambivalent about the rumors in the workshop.
Donner (Richard Comeau), Rudolph's father, is wracked with guilt over selling his handicapped son in exchange for material comfort.
Finally, Vixen (Heather Howe) spins her own tale. Did Santa take advantage of her - or did she seduce him?
Lies and truths emerge through the eight raunchily explicit monologues, great adult entertainment to combat insipid sugarplum fairy seasonal indigestion.
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