Express Gay News - December 2, 2005

Christmas (tattle) tales


What did Santa really do to Rudolph? Do Blixen and Vixen get into doe-on-doe action? And doesn't Cupid look fabulous?

By MUBARAK DAHIR
Friday, December 02, 2005

FORGET EVERYTHING THE SLICK commercial capitalists behind Christmas want you to believe about this holiday. As is always the case when something appears too picture-perfect, there is in fact a dark underbelly to the crisp snow-covered, tingling candy-cane flavored image of this holiday of all holidays. Namely, the fat guy in the red suit is a sex pervert.

He's stalked young reindeer and felt up elves and bounced one too many innocent little kids on his dirty old lap, and now, finally, it's catching up to him. That thing that happened to Vixen in the toy shop, it was just too much. Not to mention what witnessing the sordid affair did to Rudolph. As if Santa hadn't done him enough harm already.

MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS, SOL Theatre style.

Robert Hooker, the Sol's creative director, is well known for putting on unapologetically avant garde theater, and "The Eight: Reindeer Monologues," tells a Christmas tale like no other. Delivered through the eyes of the eight reindeer who lead that fateful sleigh around the world every year, "The Eight: Reindeer Monologues" is a wickedly acerbic look into the life of Santa and the other characters who inhabit the North Pole. As each reindeer tells his or her story of woe or triumph, of love or lust, of fame or misfortune, we can slowly piece together a picture of what life is really like at the top of the world.

Santa is a dirty old man. Rudolph was nothing but a reindeer retard who got pimped by his old man to satisfy Santa's jollies. Mrs. Clause is a drunk. The elves are sexless. And the reindeer are forced to work under unsafe working conditions.

THANKS TO YEARS OF CHRISTMAS marketing, we all know the eight reindeer who take to the stage, one by one, to tell their stories: "You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen..." In "The Eight: Reindeer Monologues," you get to know these fabled childhood creatures like never before. Turns out Blitzen is bull dyke. She has a thing for Vixen, too, and the two of them have been rumored to dabble in some doe-on-doe action. Or what about Prancer, who appears in a shiny silver shirt and now goes by the name "Hollywood," shamelessly trying to promote the story of his own life, to compete with that damned Rudolph movie. Dancer, who by the way is Jewish, asks for sick leave and vacation days from a one-day-a-year job. Comet, a former cocaine addict, is Santa's strongest, and maybe only, defender.

Cupid is a raging homosexual hoofer, with limp hoofs that wave all over the place and his antlers bent into the shape of a heart. Donner, Rudolph's father, has turned into an alcoholic, consumed by his guilt for prostituting his mentally incapacitated son to Santa. And then there's Vixen. That slut. Maybe she deserved what happened to her in the toy shop?

THE CAST IS COMPRISED OF Sol Theatre regulars who do a delightful job of bringing to life this witty play of punchy one-liners. Particular praise goes to Kim Ehly as the tough-talking lesbo, Blitzen, and the nervous Jew-reindeer, Dancer. Angel Perez is absolutely fabulous as the gayest reindeer of them all, in his wildly over-the-top interpretation of the flaming Cupid. And there couldn't be a better Vixen than the sexy, solicitous Erynn Dalton, who plays this part as if it was written specifically for her.

So this year, take a break from your own holiday madness and get a peek into the mad holiday world of the North Pole as only the "Star" might tell it.

© 2005 | A Unite Media Publication