THE EIGHT: REINDEER MONOLOGUES
Jeff Goode’s play premiered in 1994 and was staged worldwide since. It is NOT your commonly nice and cosy Christmas story but a quite dark look into Santa’s world – or what traditional storytelling pertaining to the ‘festive season’ since Santa took over made us believe it is.
The reason why revealing this ‘backstage’ report by the pack of well-known reindeer to an audience now is because the core of the story and the responses of the protagonists to ‘the incident’ have not changed at all; on the contrary. 32 years later, in a world that undoubtedly has progressed significantly, and the social and political fabric may have changed, people’s attitudes haven’t.
The beloved Australian institution Christmas in July 2026 is the fitting time and place to talk about some rumours regarding Santa Clause, Mrs Clause, the elves, what happened to Rudolph and with other reindeer of the pack.
It is about Santa’s toy workshop, about Santa’s gift delivery service, about Santa’s counselling service to those little boys and girls out there... about Santa the seemingly untouchable representative of ‘good deeds’ in the world, the omnipotent ‘Boss’ of a well-oiled machine in the corporate entertainment industry.
We aren’t really telling stories of an imaginary Santa, but of real people who sit in a place of power and use that power not only to satisfy business purposes. The reindeer who spill the beans here are all witnesses of what happened in the toy workshop... one after the other representing a segment of society and commenting from their more or less egotistical personal point of view, perception and judgment. Like in real life, nothing fictional.
And there will be Christmas again in December 2026.
Directed by Wolf Heidecker
LX/Sound/Visuals Design by Alex Brown
The Reindeer Pack (in order of appearance): Fanny Hanusin; Darren Thao; Joshinder Kaur Chaggar; Kay Morton; Sharon Karina; Jo-Anne Armstrong; David Lih; Isabelle Wang
By Arrangement with ORiGiNTM Theatrical On behalf of Samuel French A Concord Theatricals Company
*Contains coarse language and sexual references. Strictly MA rated.
Feedback/Comments
It was an interesting concept and loved the dark theme to Christmas. I am a big fan of the diverse cast
Clever premise which enabled the examination of alleged serious crime from a number of perspectives. Strong performances from the cast who each had to delivery long monologues. Each managed to impart the deliverance appropriate to their character. The regular injection of humour was pleasing and helped drive away the vision of Rolf Harris in a Santa suit that popped into my head.
It's an interesting format of theatre with all the monologues. The story is very relevant to the events currently happening in the world. Strong performances from all the cast. I'm Asian myself and I appreciate the diverse cast.